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

# What can you do with an english degree?

**What the degree involves:** Literature, critical theory, and essays argued closely from the text itself.

English is the archetypal degree with no job attached, and its graduates are correspondingly scattered. What it actually trains is reading closely, writing quickly and well, and building an argument someone else has to answer, and the destinations below are the places employers pay for that. Teaching and law are the two best-worn specific routes.

15 common destinations, ordered most common first rather than highest paid first. 3 of 15 have a master's or a doctoral or professional degree as their BLS typical entry education, and 12 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 | Writer and Author | $76,910 | +3.6% | 13,400 | Bachelor's |
| 2 | Editor | $77,920 | +0.6% | 9,800 | Bachelor's |
| 3 | Technical Writer | $90,390 | +0.9% | 4,500 | Bachelor's |
| 4 | [High School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/high-school-teacher) | $72,040 | -1.6% | 66,200 | Bachelor's |
| 5 | [Public Relations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/public-relations-specialist) | $74,750 | +4.8% | 27,600 | Bachelor's |
| 6 | [Market Research Analyst and Marketing Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/market-research-analyst-and-marketing-specialist) | $78,760 | +6.7% | 87,200 | Bachelor's |
| 7 | [Search Marketing Strategist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/search-marketing-strategist) | $78,760 | +6.7% | 87,200 | Bachelor's |
| 8 | [Paralegal](https://nuecareer.com/careers/paralegal) | $62,890 | +0.2% | 39,300 | Associate's |
| 9 | Proofreader and Copy Marker | $51,120 | -0.6% | 1,900 | Bachelor's |
| 10 | [Human Resources Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/human-resources-specialist) | $75,940 | +6.2% | 81,800 | Bachelor's |
| 11 | [Management Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/management-analyst) | $101,860 | +8.8% | 98,100 | Bachelor's |
| 12 | [Librarian](https://nuecareer.com/careers/librarian) | $68,270 | +1.7% | 13,500 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 13 | Poet, Lyricist and Creative Writer | $76,910 | +3.6% | 13,400 | Bachelor's |
| 14 | [Lawyer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/lawyer) | $159,670 | +4.1% | 31,500 | Doctorate (graduate study) |
| 15 | English Language and Literature Teacher, Postsecondary | $78,760 | 0.0% | 5,100 | 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