Graduates earn a median $32,249 two years after finishing, more than 26% of bachelor's majors. Measured across 622 US programmes by the Department of Education — real graduate pay, not survey answers.
Financially it is a slower start than most majors at this level — worth planning your borrowing around.
| # | University | 1 yr out | 2 yrs out | 3 yrs out | Graduates/yr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | St Catherine University | $42,462 | $45,149 | $47,221 | 39 |
| 2 | University of Nevada-Reno cost & debt at this university → | $39,764 | $44,276 | $48,860 | 84 |
| 3 | Concordia College at Moorhead cost & debt at this university → | not published | $44,170 | $46,924 | 7 |
| 4 | Viterbo University | not published | $41,937 | $45,656 | 11 |
| 5 | Bemidji State University cost & debt at this university → | $38,358 | $41,937 | $41,318 | 34 |
| 6 | Texas Christian University cost & debt at this university → | not published | $41,565 | not published | 24 |
| 7 | Minot State University cost & debt at this university → | $41,171 | $41,565 | $42,198 | 51 |
| 8 | Winona State University cost & debt at this university → | $40,999 | $41,565 | $44,489 | 67 |
| 9 | Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College | not published | $41,147 | $45,896 | 32 |
| 10 | San Francisco State University cost & debt at this university → | $32,501 | $41,007 | $46,276 | 24 |
| 11 | Saint Martin's University cost & debt at this university → | $38,709 | $40,896 | not published | 14 |
| 12 | The College of Saint Scholastica | $39,169 | $40,896 | $43,105 | 44 |
It is the median of what real graduates of this exact major earned, taken from tax records two years after they completed. It is not a starting salary, not an average of job adverts, and not a projection. The median bachelor's major in this dataset reports $37,568, so Social Work sits below the middle by $5,319.
Two years is early in a career. Fields with long training pipelines — medicine, law, research — look weaker at this point than they will at ten, while trades and applied technical fields peak sooner. Read a low figure in a long-pipeline subject as "slow start", not "bad degree".
There is no debt figure here on purpose. The Department of Education publishes earnings by field of study but not borrowing, so nobody can honestly tell you the debt of a specific major. Debt is published per institution — that is where our university cost pages carry it.
Whatever the subject pays, the money you do not borrow is the money you keep.
We may earn a commission if you take a loan through a provider here. It never changes the earnings figures on this page — those come from the US Department of Education.
Source: US Department of Education College Scorecard, field-of-study earnings (median earnings of graduates who received federal financial aid, measured 1–3 years after completion). Figures are per major and credential level, pooled across US programmes. Information only, not financial advice.