The line graph illustrates the proportion of Math graduates and all graduates who obtained full-time employment after graduating from university, while the table provides information on their average salaries between 2004 and 2012.
Overall, it is clear that Math graduates had a higher full-time employment rate than all other graduates throughout the entire period, except for the significant narrowing of the gap in 2008. Similarly, the average salary of workers with a Math degree was higher than that of the others, with the exception of the first two years.
Beginning with the line chart, in 2004, the percentage of Math graduates stood at 80%, compared with 65% for the number of employees who graduated in all subjects. The figure for Math graduates then reached its peak at 89% in 2006, before falling to 80% again in 2012. Meanwhile, the data for labourers who graduated in all subjects followed a different pattern; it experienced a significant increase from 65% to 81% in 2006, before hitting a high of around 84% in 2008. After that, it started to decrease from 84% to 65% in the last year. These statistics not only showed a slight difference in the number of labourers who graduated in Math and other fields, but also illustrated the same number of workers holding both Math and other degrees at the end of the period.
In terms of mean salary, the average salaries of these two groups both stood at $41,000 in 2004 and $43,000 in 2006. In 2008, the average salary of people with a Math bachelor’s degree rose dramatically from $43,000 to $50,000, $5,000 higher than the average salary of other workers with a bachelor’s degree, which stood at $45,000. By the end of this period, the average salaries of workers with mathematics degrees and those with degrees in other fields continued to rise, reaching peaks of $56,000 and $51,000, respectively. Overall, the figure for Math graduates experienced a greater increase than the figure for all graduates.