Thousands of new college grads will enter the workforce this year, but with unemployment at 8.2% and underemployment near 18%, many will put off the taxing job search process and opt out of the weak job market to pursue graduate degrees. Here are the best and worst master's degrees for jobs, in terms of mid-career pay and employment outlook.

The Best And Worst Master's Degrees For Jobs

forbes-articlebest-worstForbes • Jacquelyn Smith, Forbes Staff • 6/08/2012

Thousands of new college grads will enter the workforce this year, but with unemployment at 8.2% and underemployment near 18%, many will put off the taxing job search process and opt out of the weak job market to pursue graduate degrees.

With this in mind, Forbes set out to determine which master’s degrees would provide the best long-term opportunities, based on salary and employment outlook. To find the mid-career median pay for 35 popular degrees, we turned to Payscale.com, which lets users compare their salaries with those of other people in similar jobs by culling real-time salary data from its 35 million profiles. We then looked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ employment projection data to see how fast employment was expected to increase between 2010 and 2020 in popular jobs held by people with each degree. Finally we averaged each degree’s pay rank and estimated growth rank to find the best and worst master’s degrees for jobs.

In Pictures: The Best And Worst Master’s Degrees For Jobs

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