MBA Jobs: How Graduates From Top Business Schools Fare
Credit: Bloomberg / Getty Images- 2024 appears to have been a down year for MBA graduates.
- That comes after a major peak and tech boom following the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Fewer students sought jobs across the board in 2022.
The master of business administration (MBA) job market was down for the 2024 graduating class.
Several trends are clear across the board compared to previous years based on an analysis of magic or magnificent seven (M7) business schools’ MBA employment data from 2019-2024.
Fewer students are seeking employment. Pay, while robust, is holding steady rather than increasing with inflation. Fewer students are accepting the jobs they’re offered.
Job Offers vs. Acceptances
MBA jobs have followed roughly the same pattern since the pandemic: A dip in 2020 as things shut down due to COVID-19, followed by a booming recovery in 2021 and 2022 and a slight slowdown in 2023 and 2024.
One thing to keep in mind in perusing these graphs is that these represent only the employment outcomes for three months after graduation. Employment rates by the end of the year are usually much higher than this figure, but the standard for business school employment reports is three months.
Take Columbia Business School, for example. In 2023, its employment figures dipped significantly, but, by year’s end, they had increased to close to normal levels.
Students Seeking Employment
Another trend in 2024 is fewer students seeking employment than in previous years.
That could mean they’re furthering their education, starting their own venture, or were sponsored by a company and already have a job.
Columbia isn’t included in this figure because it doesn’t report job-seeking rates for graduates. You’ll notice Stanford tends to have a lower number of students seeking employment than the rest of the top business schools, but that’s largely due to a higher number of students starting their own ventures.
Base Salary
Base salaries have mostly leveled off since a meteoric rise around 2022. They remain above pre-pandemic levels, but, for the most part, they haven’t increased over the past few years.
These salary figures don’t include signing bonuses. Not all M7 schools report signing bonuses, and some report them differently than others.
At Harvard, for instance, the median signing bonus has hovered at $30,000 since 2019, with roughly between 50% and 60% of job seekers landing a bonus.