Graduates With These Business Degrees Are Projected to Land Jobs in 2025
Credit: skynesher / E+ /Getty Images- Employers indicated plans for increased hiring across degree types in the 2025 Corporate Recruiters Survey from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).
- Employers also indicated increased salaries year over year.
- The MBA remained the highest-paid degree type, with projected earnings of $25,000 more than the median wage for experienced industry hires.
- Other degree types also are projected to see year-over-year salary bumps.
Corporate recruiters are optimistic about hiring business graduates, and they even plan on increasing hiring across degree types this year.
In fact, employers indicated plans for increased pay across degree types in the 2025 Corporate Recruiters Survey from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC).
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A regional profile of the United States from the survey shows increased hiring projections for master of business administration (MBA) graduates. Roughly 46% said they planned to hire the same number of MBA graduates as in 2024, and another 26% indicated increased hiring plans.
Those numbers are slightly higher than in last year’s report, when 46% of employers indicated similar year-over-year hiring plans, and 25% said they planned to hire more MBA graduates.
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All the report findings for 2025 are projections by employers and aren’t guaranteed to result in higher job figures, but they generally reflect optimism about plans to hire business school graduates.
Recruiters also indicated plans to hire experienced workers directly from the industry and bachelor’s graduates in this year’s survey. About 48% of employers said they would hire the same as in 2024 for experienced hires, and 29% indicated plans to hire more.
For bachelor’s graduates, those numbers were 50% and 23% respectively.
Fewer than half of the recruiters said they planned to hire more specialized degree types, like accounting, finance, analytics, and marketing — but that’s also been the case in previous years.
“As in years past, generalist MBA talent typically appeals to more kinds of organizations than graduates of more specialized business master’s programs, so the comparatively larger shares of employers who do not plan to hire business master’s talent should not be interpreted as a lack of job prospects for these students post-graduation,” the report reads.
“Rather, there are fewer and more specialized roles and organizations that will appeal to business master’s graduates.”
Employer interest in specialized business master’s degrees has been on the rise in recent years, particularly as business schools roll out niche degrees that focus on high-demand fields like artificial intelligence (AI).
Those strong year-over-year hiring projections show confidence among the employers who were surveyed as part of GMAC’s report. Fewer recruiters reported recession fears or inflation as an influence for their hiring plans, although the survey was conducted between January and March — just before President Donald Trump announced his tariff policies.
“It is also notable that more respondents say ‘country leaders’ will be a major influence on their hiring decisions — increases that were most pronounced among employers in the Middle East, Latin America, and the United States,” the report reads.
Pay Projections on the Rise
While not every degree type may see a marked increase in hiring, increased pay projections were universal in the U.S.
The projected median salary increased to varying degrees across multiple degree types.
MBA median pay increased from a projected $120,000 in 2024 to $125,000 in 2025, and projected median pay for experienced direct-from-industry hires rose from $95,000 to $100,000.
That means having an MBA still pays off, with MBA grads projected to make median of $25,000 more than those with industry experience alone.
Every other degree type also saw varying projected pay increases.
Master’s in management graduates saw median pay projections rise from $80,000 to $90,000; master of accounting graduates, who are in particularly high demand amid the certified public accountant (CPA) retirement cliff, are projected to see a bump from $75,000 to $92,500.
The highest increase belonged to master’s in data analytics and master of marketing graduates, both of whom are projected to see $20,000 median salary increases.
Salary projections for bachelor’s graduates also show a modest pay bump, with a $5,000 year-over-year median salary increase from $70,000 to $75,000.