Most of the worry about picking a major focuses on pay. The quieter risk is demand: whether the field you train for is adding jobs or losing them. Sort all 38 college major fields by their projected employment growth over the next decade and the answer is reassuring for almost everyone. Thirty-five fields are growing. Only three are shrinking. And the steepest decline of the three, precision production at minus 7.4 percent, lands on a field that already pays below the all-major average. The fields losing demand are mostly hands-on technical trades, and they rarely pay enough to offset the risk of training for shrinking work.
Which Majors Are Actually Shrinking
Just three of the 38. Precision production is projected to lose 7.4 percent of its jobs over the decade, communications technology 5.7 percent, and science technology a slight 0.2 percent. Every other field is growing, and the average field adds 3.1 percent, so a shrinking major gives up more than ten points of demand against a typical choice.
The Fields Losing Jobs
Below are the six slowest-growing major fields, with the three shrinking ones at the top. The growth figure is projected employment change over the decade; earnings are the national median four years after graduation.
| Rank | Major field | Job growth | Median earnings (4yr) | Colleges offering |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Precision Production | -7.4% | $47,488 | 1,030 |
| 2 | Communications Tech | -5.7% | $44,889 | 652 |
| 3 | Science Tech | -0.2% | $68,416 | 287 |
| 4 | Education | +0.4% | $50,499 | 2,359 |
| 5 | Languages | +0.4% | $49,984 | 1,304 |
| 6 | English | +1.4% | $48,590 | 1,684 |
The three fields below zero, and the line just above it
Projected employment change over the decade, six slowest-growing major fields
The gap between the shrinking group and the rest is wider than the table makes it look. Precision production and communications technology are not merely slow growers near zero; they are below the line by a full five to seven points, while the fourth-slowest field, education, is already positive. The cliff edge is real, and only two fields are clearly over it.
Does Shrinking Demand Come With Higher Pay
It does not, for the two fields that matter most. The instinct is that a risky, declining field should at least pay a premium. The two fastest-shrinking fields do the opposite: precision production pays $47,488 and communications technology $44,889, both well under the $60,287 all-major average. Only science technology breaks the pattern, at $68,416, and its decline is a barely-negative 0.2 percent. So the fields with the clearest demand risk are also paying below the middle of the pack.
Of the 38 fields, 35 are growing. Of the three that are shrinking, two also pay below average, which is the worst combination a major can carry: less demand for the same or lower pay. The lone exception, science technology, pairs a tiny projected decline with above-average earnings, which is a very different bet than training for a trade that is both losing jobs and paying modestly.
How We Measured This
The growth figure is the projected employment change for the occupations tied to each major field, drawn from federal Bureau of Labor Statistics projections and mapped to the 38 two-digit instructional program categories. Earnings are the national median earnings four years after graduation from the federal College Scorecard, aggregated to the same field level. The all-major average of $60,287 is the mean of the per-field median earnings across all fields that report a figure. The full method and source vintages are on the methodology and data sources pages.
What the Numbers Do Not Say
A field-level projection is a blunt instrument, and it hides as much as it shows. A shrinking field is not a field with no jobs; precision production still employs over a million people, and a 7.4 percent decline means a smaller workforce, not an empty one. Within each field, specialties move at different speeds, so a particular program inside a shrinking category can still be growing while the average falls. The projections also reflect national trends, not local ones, and a trade that is contracting nationally can be in short supply in a specific region. And demand is only one input; a graduate who wants the work and is good at it can do well in a field the averages call shrinking.
What This Means for Students
Treat a negative growth number as a reason to look closer, not to walk away. Only three fields carry it, and two of them pair the demand risk with below-average pay, which is the combination worth scrutinizing hardest. If a shrinking field still draws you, use the Career Path Explorer to see which specific occupations inside it are growing against the field trend, because the average hides real variation. And weigh demand against pay together rather than separately, since how all 38 majors rank by earnings shows what the opposite end of this trade-off looks like.
What This Means for Career-Changers
If you are retraining, the cost of betting on a declining field is steeper than it is for an 18-year-old, because you have less time to recover from a wrong call. The two fastest-shrinking fields are also the lower-paying ones, so a switch into them carries demand risk and a modest ceiling at once. Before committing, run the fields you are weighing through the Match Quiz to surface options that fit your interests without the demand penalty, and compare any shrinking field against how all 38 majors rank by earnings so you see the pay trade-off in full. A field that is losing jobs and paying below average is the one bet that rarely rewards a second career.
