Wharton 2022 MBA Jobs Report: Median Salary Jumps 12.9% To $175K

Amid all the recent headlines about layoffs and hiring freezes at tech giants Meta, Amazon, and Twitter, here’s a bit of bright news for MBAs considering a career in tech: The University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School released its latest employment report Thursday (November 17) showing that more graduates than ever sought and found jobs in tech.

Nearly 17% of Wharton’s Class of 2022 MBAs secured jobs in the wobbly technology sector, and median base salary in the industry jumped 8.7% this year to $153,500, up from $141,000. Nearly 20% of Wharton’s Class of 2023 internships worked in tech this summer, as well.

SECTOR’S TROUBLES NOT OVER YET

But techies should be wary of seeing Wharton’s success in tech as a sign of rebound. While the raw number of Wharton MBAs finding jobs in tech is higher than ever, the percentage of the class in the industry is down slightly, as the number of job-seeking graduates in 2022 (633) is 8.2% more than in 2021 (585) as a result of Wharton enrolling larger classes at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

Moreover, Whartonites’ success in landing tech gigs runs counter to many of their peer schools, where tech hiring is down — and in some cases down big — and likely points to a very different tech landscape graduates faced this summer as they rounded out their offers.

True Up, a website that tracks hundreds of thousands of tech jobs, reports an ongoing bloodbath in the industry, including 58,000 tech layoffs since October, prompting at least one top MBA program to make direct overtures to recently unemployed techies. Through November 17, True Up had tracked nearly 200,000 tech jobs lost in almost 1,200 layoffs.

MEDIAN SALARIES JUMP 12.9% TO $175K

Overall, 98.7% of Wharton's job-seeking graduates this year had job offers, and 96.2% accepted, a slight dip from 2021 when 99% of graduates had offers and 96.8% took them. There were 852 students in the Class of 2022, 74.3% of which were seeking employment — almost 100 more students than the Class of 2021 (754 students, 81.8% seeking employment).

Just as we've seen at other top B-schools this fall, median salary for Wharton MBAs grew significantly this year, jumping 12.9% to a school-record $175,000. That’s after salaries remained at a flat $150,000 in 2019 and 2020 and rose only to $155,000 in 2021.

So far, that salary increase is on par with other M7 salaries: Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, and Chicago Booth all reported double-digit year-over-year jumps in median base salary to $175,000. Northwestern Kellogg’s median was $165,000. Columbia Business School and Stanford Graduate School of Business have yet to release their 2022 employment reports.

43% FIND WORK IN THE NORTHEAST

Financial Services remained the most popular industry for Wharton grads with 38.6% of the class accepting jobs. Median salary in the field shot up from $150,000 the last three years to $173,513 in 2022. Under that umbrella, private equity was the most popular destination at 12.6% ($175,000 median salary), followed by investment banking at 11.7% ($175,000), investment management at 6.4% ($170,559), and venture capital at 4.1% ($150,000).

The second most popular industry, Consulting (24.3%), saw a $10,000 jump in median salary to $175,000.

Unsurprisingly, the Northeast is the most popular region for Wharton grads, with 43% of this year’s class working on the East Coast. This is also the region with the highest median salary ($175,000).

The Class of 2022 was 41% women, a low for the school that has since become the first elite business school to reach gender parity. It enrolled 52% for the Class of 2023 and 50% for the Class of 2024. (See Wharton’s Class Of 2024 Profile.)

 

MEDIAN MONTHLY PAY FOR WHARTON INTERNS: MORE THAN $10K

Unlike some of its peers, Wharton does not report numbers of grads hired by specific companies, but the school did list 65 companies that hired two or more members of the Class of 2022, including the usual suspects — Amazon, McKinsey, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Apple, Google, Deloitte, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley.

For Wharton interns this summer, median monthly pay was $10,417.

• Financial Services was the most popular destination with (38.5% of the intern class and a median salary of $12,500.
• Technology was the second most popular at 19.4% with a median salary of $9,393. That compares to the 17.4% in 2021 with a salary of $8,298.
• Consulting was third most popular at 19%, but had the highest overall median salary at $14,517.

Read the full report here.

DON’T MISS: WHARTON’S CLASS OF 2024 PROFILE AND MEET THE WHARTON SCHOOL'S MBA CLASS OF 2024