Jobs for the Major
How this major affects a job search
The field of math is growing. There are several industries that are starting to realize how important and useful having mathematicians on board can be. Sports teams have been hiring statisticians more regularly, and high tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, Facebook and PayPal have always had open head counts for data miners.
The majority of mathematician jobs require a master's degree in statistics, mathematics, or survey methodology. Research and academic jobs generally require a Ph.D. Your undergraduate degree might be in mathematics, but be sure to take advantage of the various areas of concentration that your university offers such as applied math, computer science, economics and life sciences.
Common Career Fields
Actuary. Basically, actuaries are counters. They could be called professional counters, even. Sort of odd. They are hired by companies—usually in the field of insurance but sometimes by financial firms, banks, airlines, etc.—to assess risk. They are essentially interested in danger statistics. Oooh, sounds cool, doesn't it?
The danger of losing money, the danger of constructing a building in a particular location, the danger of certain employees growing ill for extended periods of time or going on maternity leave (for example, women in California are statistically much more likely than men to take time off for giving birth).
Companies hire actuaries to help them make projections about the future so that they can make the most cost and revenue-effective business decisions as possible. They want to make money. So they can stay in business. So they can hire more actuaries. Doo dah, doo dah.
Environmental Groups. Researchers in environmental fields such as biology, botany, geology, atmospheric science, ecology, physics and conservation are often involved in working within scientific research programs in universities, governmental organizations, and private companies. No matter what the organization is, they always have some sort of crispy deep-fried numbers to crunch your teeth into.
Mathematicians in environmental studies might work in oceanography, for example, assessing temperature patterns in ocean currents and their effects on the weather. Or they may assess risk of damage from a nuclear accident.
Financial Analyst. The lion's share of financial analysts work on Wall Street for "buy" or "sell" side firms. A "buy" side firm is a mutual fund, hedge fund, or other investment entity charged with managing money for an individual. The "sell" side of that world consists of stock brokers who sell money for a living. Selling money sounds a little backwards doesn't it?
Financial analysts on the buy side are trying to find a rationale to buy something. They figure out if a given investment opportunity is worth jumping into. To answer such question they need to use (drumroll please)…math. Dealing with investments involves a lot of risk assessment. Imagine doing no research and ending up putting money into something like Ask Jeeves. Do you know who Jeeves even is? Exactly.
Hedge Fund Manager. Hedge Fund managers are known to be a little snobby, and not just for their strangely well-manicured front yard plant life. Why else? Clients expect them to be the best of the best, and as such they feel entitled to charging a bunch of random fees. For most hedge funds, the fund itself charges "2-20" which means that they take a 2% per year fee and then, after fees are paid, take an additional 20% of the profits of the fund in a given year as an "incentive fee".
So a fund managing $500M has a solid year and is up 20%. They go to $600M "assets under management" or AUM. They will have charged a bit over $10M in fees, which pay the salaries of the financial analysts, secretaries, lawyers, the rent, and computer costs. Hedge fund managers don't get rich on the fees, but they do get rich on the "carry" —a fancy word for incentive fee. You thought Bank of America was fee-hungry.
Physicist. Physicists are the geeks...er...um...people who attempt to explain how the physical world works. They ask important questions and then go about finding the answers. What are the immutable laws of nature? Can a remote control be built that is capable of muting them?
How fast can we make a particle travel, and if it gets loose, could it break my windshield? Also, is that covered by my insurance? How does matter interact and why does it behave the way that it does? Why does it…matter? (Sorry we had to)
Physicists will be hired to answer all of the above. Whether it be in academia, the private sector, or working for the government in super cool Bond-villain type labs.
Scientist. So if you've checked all the boxes for "interest in biology," "scientific mind," "boatload of patience," "knack for intriguing accents" and "yearning for knowledge," science could be your destiny. Now you need to figure out what type of scientist. Of these there are many.
There are ecologists who study the environment, microbiologists (who spend much of their time doing the above), aquatic and marine biologists who study plants and animals that hang out underwater, botanists who study plant life and the environment, zoologists who study pretty much all animals, and biochemists and biophysicists who deal with a broad range of studies at more of a molecular level.
Those are only a small sampling of all that there is out there. The common thread to each field of science though, is that it boils down to mathematics in the end. Everything is math.
Statistician. Statisticians come up with "meaningful conclusions to messy data" (a common definition from an unknown source quoted by many statisticians). While statistics isn't the same as mathematics, they do go hand-in-hand.
Statistics is a branch of applied math—the study of the physical, biological or sociological world—and it uses mathematics to solve statistical problems and to develop new ways of solving…statistical problems. From how much of a certain drug should be put into each capsule, to what percent of actual meat is found to be acceptable in a McRib. Mmmm… mostly ribs(?).
Current unemployment of the major
5%Percentage of majors who get a higher degree after college
29%Stats obtained from this source.