Hiring Trends of Recent Graduates, 2013-2017

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The American Geosciences Institute has been conducting the AGI’s Geoscience Student Exit Survey for the past five years. The upcoming Status of the Geoscience Workforce 2018 report will have an analysis of the five-year trends from the survey.

One important measure is the change of hiring by different employment sectors over the past five years for bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral graduates. Percent stacked area graphs for each degree level show the various sectors hiring geoscience graduates at their degree completion, as well as the change of hiring within these industries over time. The figures show these hiring trends from 2013-2017.

AGI’s Exit Survey was one of the first quantitative datasets sensing the slowdown in hiring of new graduates in the oil and gas industry in 2015 and 2016 for all degree levels. As oil and gas hiring slowed among bachelor's graduates, higher percentages of graduates were hired within the environmental services industry and federal government. Bachelor’s graduates also found jobs within a more diverse collection of industries compared to master’s and doctoral graduates. The decrease in hiring of doctoral graduates in the oil and gas industry led to a greater proportion of graduates finding jobs within 4-year universities and research institutes. The decline in the proportion of master’s graduates entering into the oil and gas industry was not as drastic as among bachelor’s and doctoral graduates, but there was an increase in joining the federal government as hiring decreased in the oil and gas industry.