---
title: "What can you do with an anthropology degree?"
description: "15 careers anthropology graduates commonly move into, with BLS median pay, projected growth and entry requirements for each."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors/anthropology"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T07:20:09.337Z"
---

# What can you do with an anthropology degree?

**What the degree involves:** Ethnography, fieldwork methods, human evolution, and cultures compared side by side.

Anthropology teaches you to study how people actually behave rather than how they say they behave, and the commercial world buys that as user research, market research and organisational work. The academic, museum and field archaeology destinations are real but small, and most of them need graduate study.

15 common destinations, ordered most common first rather than highest paid first. 6 of 15 have a master's or a doctoral or professional degree as their BLS typical entry education, and 13 of 15 are projected to grow. A major is a body of study, not a job assignment: these are destinations of people who took the degree, not what the degree entitles anyone to.

| # | Occupation | Median annual wage | Projected change | Openings a year | Typical entry education |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | [Social and Human Service Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-and-human-service-assistant) | $45,930 | +6.4% | 50,600 | High school |
| 2 | [Market Research Analyst and Marketing Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/market-research-analyst-and-marketing-specialist) | $78,760 | +6.7% | 87,200 | Bachelor's |
| 3 | [Human Resources Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/human-resources-specialist) | $75,940 | +6.2% | 81,800 | Bachelor's |
| 4 | Community Health Worker | $51,850 | +11.3% | 7,800 | High school |
| 5 | Social Science Research Assistant | $61,990 | +4.4% | 5,200 | Bachelor's |
| 6 | Technical Writer | $90,390 | +0.9% | 4,500 | Bachelor's |
| 7 | Museum Technician and Conservator | $51,440 | +5.4% | 1,900 | Bachelor's |
| 8 | Health Education Specialist | $64,070 | +4.5% | 7,900 | Bachelor's |
| 9 | Urban and Regional Planner | $89,320 | +3.4% | 3,400 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 10 | Survey Researcher | $69,460 | -5.2% | 700 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 11 | Archivist | $64,550 | +3.8% | 1,100 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 12 | Curator | $63,420 | +7.0% | 1,800 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 13 | Geographer | $102,040 | -3.1% | 100 | Bachelor's |
| 14 | Anthropologist | $70,770 | +3.7% | 800 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 15 | Anthropology and Archeology Teacher, Postsecondary | $99,650 | +2.7% | 500 | Doctorate (graduate study) |

Wages are BLS OEWS, May 2025. Projected change, annual openings and typical entry education are BLS Employment Projections. Occupation descriptions are O\*NET. Nothing on this page is estimated and no figure is generated by an AI model.

Full record for any row, including wage percentiles and state-level pay: https://nuecareer.com/careers/{slug} or https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/{slug}. Other majors: https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology