Your career, your future

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Your career

your future

What to study? Would it be worth to invest in that career? Are there openings in that field? How much can you earn? Are there many people studying the same thing as I am? The Data Intelligence Unit at La Nación made this interactive special to help you find the answers to these questions.

Number of graduates from 2008 through 2010 and their job status in 2013

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Check unemployment in two careers that interest you and the chances of working in the field you study. Turn on the key Visualize population to display total number of graduates per profession.

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FOOD AND
AGRICULTURE
BASIC
SCIENCES
- Biology
- Biotechnology
- Physics
- Geography
- Chemistry
ARTS
AND LETTERS
EDUCATION
SOCIAL
SCIENCES
ECONOMIC
SCIENCES
ENGINEERING
HEALTH

This analysis is based on data from the National Rector Council (CONARE in Spanish) in March 2013. This organization watches over college education and inquired into the job status, to 2013, of the 74,000 bachelors and graduates between 2008 and 2010.

Visualize population

1 in every 20

5% of graduates had not found a job in 2013, even though they had graduated from 2008 through 2010. The unemployed are 3,508 out of the 74,434 graduates in that period.

¢724.000

Is the average salary a person with a bachelor’s makes. Physicists report the highest: ¢1.1 million; theologians the lowest: ¢380,000.

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Choose the sector that interests you and compare unemployment among its professions and their average salaries. Activate other tabs to compare indicators.

Note : Average salary of graduates in thousands of colones.

Nurses, accountants, and teachers almost sure to get a job

Among the professions with over 1,000 graduates, the brightest horizon is enjoyed by those professionals. The same is not true for Preschool, Tourism, and Physical Therapy.

Job, yes, but with low income

All of the 2,723 nurses have a job, but the average salary is low: ¢500,000. According to the professional association, there are graduates working as nurse’s aides, because of the scarcity of positions in the Costa Rican Social Security Institution (CCSS in Spanish).

Job Offers

Check how many there are for accountants inBuscomi.

10.197

professionals in the Nurses Association, which forecasts that the demand will increase as the population grows older. In 2013, seven out of each 100 residents was over 65. In 20 years it will be 14 of each 100.

13,6 million

patients taken care of at CCSS hospitals in 2013; if we divided them into each graduate nurse, every one of them would have cared for 1,333 people that year.

Risky Bets

Respiratory Therapy, International Relations, and Criminology are professions with high unemployment rate and with a high number of graduates in unrelated jobs.

CSI Phenomenon

Ilse Gutierrez, CONARE’s labor study coordinator, said that the popular TV series about the life of criminologists and forensic surgeons awakened interest among young people. Out of the 740 graduates, there were jobs in their field for only 482 (65%) of them.

24%

Unemployment in Respiratory Therapy. Of the 164 graduates, 39 had no job in 2013 and 37 (30%) worked in an unrelated area.

¢387.000

Average salary for respiratory therapists. They help patients overcome cardiopulmonary diseases. In Costa Rica, those diseases are the third cause of death.

Education robust, excepting Preschool

The careers in Education are favorite, no other area attracts as many young people. Three out of every 10 graduates from 2008 through 2010 (22,300) did so in one of its 21 specialties. Most specialized in Primary and Special Education.

Preschool

art of the problem to find a job is the lower number of children ages 3 to 6. Early in the century, eight out of every 100 inhabitants were that age; in 20 years, there will b e only 5 per each 100, according to UCR’s Central American Population Center.

English makes the difference

Finding a job to teach children under 7 is more feasible if one also speaks English. The salary is also higher. As an average, a preschool teacher makes ₡425,750 a month; one with a second language averages ₡532,286.

¢1 million

eachers of technical education in services and industry are among the best paid: ¢900,000 to ¢1 million a month. Day technical high schools increased from 92 in 2011 to 122 in 2013.

73.400

Professionals are dedicated to teaching, according to the 2011 Census. Seven out of each 10 are women.

Alternatives with a future

Statistics? Archivist? Diagnostic Imaging? If you do not have these careers in your horizon, know that all of their graduates were hired before they finished their studies. The salary for a person with a bachelor´s in one of these fields is over ¢900,000 a month.

Few Look for Them

The careers where there is no unemployment or where it is very low graduate only a few students: 11 to 118 a year. Exceptions to this rule are Pharmacy, Dentistry, and Science Teaching, with over 200 new professionals a year.

Health

In this area we find the majority (7) of the careers with the best job perspective.

50%

The McKinsey firm warned that in just three years, in the U.S. alone, there will be a need for 50% more big data analysts, statisticians among them.

Statistics

Only 460

n the 70 years the School of Statistics has operated at UCR, only 460 specialists have graduated in Statistics.

Traditional Careers Still Have Room

It is often said that their market is saturated, but professionals in Law, Management, Medicine, and Elementary Teaching keep on finding jobs in their field of studies.

50/50

In Law, the same number of men and women graduated from 2008 to 2010: 1,600. Women are a majority in Management (54%), Medicine (65%), and Education (87%).

Sources: Own analysis based on data from the National Rector Council, Central American Population Center, CCSS, 2011 Census, and interviews.

About the Data