What subject you study is associated with very different earnings — years after graduation, not just at the start
DfE tracks graduates through the tax system for a decade after they leave. The gap between subjects doesn't just exist at graduation — it grows.
Five years after graduating (the 2017/18 cohort), median annual earnings ranged from Performing arts at £25,600 to Medicine and dentistry at £56,400, against an all-subjects median of £33,300.
Earnings by subject, five years on
Median graduate earnings by subject, five years after graduating
Medicine, dentistry, economics and engineering graduates earn the most five years on; creative arts and performing arts graduates the least — but every subject sits inside a wide range, not a single number.
View data table
| Period | Median earnings |
|---|---|
| Medicine and dentistry | 56400 |
| Nursing and midwifery | 37300 |
| Economics | 51200 |
| Engineering | 44300 |
| Computing | 39900 |
| Law | 33300 |
| Business and management | 35100 |
| Education and teaching | 29300 |
| Sociology, social policy and anthropology | 30000 |
| Creative arts and design | 27100 |
| Performing arts | 25600 |
England · Source: DfE, "Graduate labour market outcomes (LEO): 2023 to 2024" · as of 25 June 2026 (last updated 24 August 2026) (2017/18 cohort at 5 years)
The full range, not just the median
DfE also publishes the lower- and upper-quartile earnings for each subject — the middle half of graduates, not just the midpoint. Economics has the widest spread of any subject in this table, and even the lowest-earning subjects have graduates earning well above their subject's own median.
View as table
| Subject | Cohort size | Sustained employment/study | Lower quartile | Median | Upper quartile |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Medicine and dentistry | 6,970 | 92.4% | £48,100 | £56,400 | £68,100 |
| Nursing and midwifery | 20,150 | 93.7% | £28,500 | £37,300 | £44,700 |
| Economics | 5,980 | 87.9% | £37,000 | £51,200 | £69,900 |
| Engineering | 13,865 | 89.4% | £34,800 | £44,300 | £55,600 |
| Computing | 12,195 | 85.8% | £28,900 | £39,900 | £56,000 |
| Law | 11,475 | 87.5% | £25,300 | £33,300 | £45,400 |
| Business and management | 36,270 | 85.4% | £26,400 | £35,100 | £48,300 |
| Education and teaching | 15,120 | 89.8% | £21,200 | £29,300 | £35,500 |
| Sociology, social policy and anthropology | 11,490 | 88.1% | £23,800 | £30,000 | £36,200 |
| Creative arts and design | 20,675 | 85% | £20,500 | £27,100 | £33,700 |
| Performing arts | 13,010 | 87.7% | £18,300 | £25,600 | £31,800 |
| All subjects | 302,770 | 88.3% | £25,300 | £33,300 | £44,300 |
The gap widens with time
A single horizon can understate how differently subjects perform over a career. Economics graduates and creative arts graduates start closer together than their five-year figures alone would suggest — the gap between them grows roughly 4.2× between one year and ten years after graduation (from about £9,800 to about £41,400).
How the earnings gap between subjects changes over time
Economics graduates' earnings pull further ahead at each successive horizon; creative arts graduates' earnings rise too, but more slowly — this is a widening gap, not a fixed one.
View data table
| Period | Economics | Creative arts and design | All subjects |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 year | 30700 | 20900 | 26000 |
| 3 years | 39200 | 24500 | 29600 |
| 5 years | 51200 | 27100 | 33300 |
| 10 years | 71400 | 30000 | 38800 |
England · Source: DfE, "Graduate labour market outcomes (LEO): 2023 to 2024" · as of 25 June 2026 (last updated 24 August 2026)
Different horizons are different graduation cohorts
Because DfE has only reached the 2023-24 tax year, the 10-year figure comes from people who graduated in 2012/13, while the 1-year figure comes from people who graduated in 2021/22 — not the same people followed forward. Reading this chart as "what happens to one graduate over ten years" overstates what it shows; reading it as "how these cohorts compared at each point DfE has data for" is what the source supports.
The same gaps that exist before university persist after it
31,800
Women, median earnings (£)
89.1% in sustained employment/study
36,200
Men, median earnings (£)
87.2% in sustained employment/study
5.3pp
Employment gap, least vs most deprived area
Young entrants only — see caveat below
Five years after graduating, women's median earnings were 12.2% lower than men's across all subjects combined (£31,800 against £36,200) — but the gap varies by subject, and in some subjects it reverses.
The overall gap is driven substantially by which subjects each sex studies in greater numbers (women are a majority in lower-median-earning subjects like Nursing, Education and Health & Social Care), not only by within-subject pay differences — several individual subjects (Economics, Performing arts, Media) show a near-zero or reversed gap.
Among graduates who started their degree aged under 21, those who had been eligible for free school meals earned a median of £30,700 five years on, against £33,700 for those who had not — a gap that persists after graduation, not just before it.
This breakdown covers young entrants only
Graduates who started their course aged under 21 (National Pupil Database linkage only covers school-age pupils)
Where graduates end up living
Region is where the graduate currently lives and works, not where they studied, and it is not restricted to England — DfE tracks graduates wherever in the UK they end up. London's premium is the clearest regional pattern in this data.
View as table
| Region | Graduates | Sustained employment/study | Median earnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| London | 73,040 | 86.2% | £39,200 |
| South East | 40,835 | 89% | £34,400 |
| North West | 38,600 | 89% | £30,700 |
| North East | 11,950 | 89.6% | £30,000 |
What this does not show
Industry, not occupation — never a specific job or employer
LEO links a graduate's employer to an industry classification (ONS Standard Industrial Classification codes) — DfE's own words: this "provide[s] information on the type of economic activity the graduates' employer is engaged in, not the occupation of the graduate." There is no occupation code in this dataset. "Works in the retail industry" is exactly as specific as this figure gets — it cannot show a job title, a seniority level, or a named employer, and this page does not attempt to show one.
Whether one subject caused better outcomes than another
DfE's own caveat, stated for qualification level and equally applicable here: these results should not be considered to show the causal impact of studying a particular subject. The raw figures below do not account for differences in the students each subject recruits — including prior attainment, which differs hugely between, say, Medicine and Creative Arts before either course begins.
A like-for-like comparison across subjects
DfE's own words: "Even with these additional splits, each CAH subject area can still include a diverse range of subjects, some of which will lead to significantly different employment and earnings outcomes." A single figure for "Business and management" or "Creative arts and design" covers a wide internal spread.
Full-time-equivalent pay
DfE's own words: full-time and part-time employment cannot be distinguished in LEO, so median annualised earnings are pulled down by part-time workers within each subject without that being visible in the headline figure.
Self-employed graduates
Graduates whose only income comes from self-employment cannot be matched to the earnings data DfE uses here and are excluded — a real gap for subjects (creative arts in particular) where self-employment and freelance work are common.
Graduates who moved abroad
Individuals known to have left the UK are excluded, because their earnings outside the UK tax system are not visible to this data — so a subject with a highly international graduate outcome will show its UK-based leavers only.
Last verified 2026-08-31. Data: DfE, "Graduate labour market outcomes (LEO): 2023 to 2024".
Related pages
- In this sectionFrom classroom to workThe rest of this chapter — what school leads to.
- In this sectionWhat was the qualification worth?The same LEO discipline, applied earlier — Key Stage 2 and GCSE.
- In this sectionThe university expansionHow participation grew before these graduates ever started their degree.
- In this sectionEducationThe other chapters, and how this section is built.
Scope and definitions
England, not the UK
Education is devolved. Every figure on this page is England only. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland operate different frameworks with different legal definitions, and their figures are not directly comparable.
First-degree graduates of England-based providers
This page covers UK-domiciled graduates of first degrees at higher education providers in England, tracked through LEO. It does not cover postgraduate qualifications, further education, or graduates of Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish institutions.