MBA Jobs 2025: As A Tough Market Persists, Tech Finds Its Footing At Duke Fuqua

Duke Fuqua School of Business’s newest MBA employment report points to a job market still working through a reset. Overall employment grew more challenging in 2025, consulting and finance pulled back again, and median pay fell sharply from its 2024 peak. However, there was some good news after the tech-centric angst of the last few years: Mirroring the results at some high-profile peer schools, technology industry hiring rebounded at Fuqua from a multi-year low.

For the Class of 2025, 72.4% of graduates (315 MBAs) pursued full-time jobs, with 68.6% holding offers by graduation. Three months later, 82.2% had received offers and 79% had accepted them. Those figures trail the Class of 2024, when 85% of Fuqua MBAs had offers and 82% had accepted them at the three-month mark, already a sharp pullback from the near-universal employment rates the school reported just a few years ago.

Compensation softened as well. Fuqua reports a median base salary of $160,000, down sharply from $175,000 for the Class of 2024. The median signing bonus held at $30,000, with 85.1% of graduates reporting that they received one. Using Poets&Quants’ method of calculating total compensation, this means Fuqua grads saw a drop from a median $201,100 last year to $185,530 – a decline of 7.7%.

DUKE FUQUA MBA JOBS BY INDUSTRY 2019-2025

Industry	2025	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019
Consulting	34%	39%	43%	36%	32%	31%	32%
Finance	20.9%	25%	21%	16%	17%	18%	20%
Technology	15.6%	12%	17%	23%	27%	27%	23%
Healthcare	7.4%	7%	6%	11%	10%	8%	8%
Consumer Goods	4.9%	7%	6%	4%	6%	5%	5%

Source: Duke Fuqua

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TECH REBOUNDS — BUT DOES NOT RESET THE MARKET

Outside of compensation, the most visible year-over-year change in the 2025 report is technology’s rebound from its weakest showing in many cycles. Tech accounted for 15.6% of full-time accepted offers, up from 12% in 2024, when layoffs, hiring freezes, and delayed start dates rippled through MBA pipelines.

The rebound is real, but tech’s 2025 share remains below 2023 (17%) and far below its peak years of 2020-2021 (both 27%) and 2022 (23%).

On the tech front, Fuqua’s experience mirrors what has begun to surface at a handful of other top U.S. MBA programs. At Stanford Graduate School of Business and UC Berkeley Haas, recent employment reports show technology regaining share after pullbacks from 2022-2024; same for NYU Stern School of Business and Harvard Business School, signaling that hiring has resumed selectively at the top end of the market even as overall conditions remain uneven.

Just as important is where tech’s gains came from. Consulting and finance — long Fuqua’s two largest employment engines — both continued to retreat. Consulting remained the school’s top destination at 34% of full-time hires, but that’s down from 39% in 2024 and well off its 43% peak in 2023. Financial services fell to 20.9% from 25% a year earlier, sliding back toward its pre-pandemic range.  

A BROADER RESET, NOT A SINGLE-SECTOR STORY

Tech gained share not because hiring snapped back across the board, but because the sectors that absorbed much of the pain in 2024 pulled back further in 2025, allowing outcomes to spread more evenly across industries.

Healthcare held essentially flat at 7.4%, while consumer packaged goods declined to 4.9% from 7% last year.

Ed Bernier, assistant dean for Daytime MBA career services, points to the breadth of outcomes for the class. “The 2024-2025 Daytime MBA Employment Report reflects that impact,” he writes in a blog post. “It also highlights the Class of 2025’s resilience, adaptability, and talent.”

Bernier described the consulting pullback as normalization rather than erosion: “After a spike in the previous two years, consulting hiring returned to more typical levels.”

PAY PRESSURE, EVEN IN CORE SECTORS

Compensation patterns mirrored the tighter market. Consulting continued to anchor the top of the pay scale, with a $190,000 median base salary, followed by finance at $175,000. Technology grads reported a $144,000 median base.

By function, consulting led again, accounting for 35.9% of full-time acceptances, followed by finance and accounting at 27.4%, general management at 16.5%, and marketing and sales at 13.1%. Investment banking represented 10.6% of hires.  

Geographically, Fuqua graduates dispersed broadly across the U.S., with the Northeast leading at 21.3%, followed by the South (17.4%), Southwest (16.1%), and West (15.7%).  

In total, 106 employers hired Fuqua MBAs in 2025, including Amazon, Apple, Intuit, Meta, Microsoft, and Dell, as well as a long list of smaller and mid-sized employers.  

Behind the topline outcomes, Bernier emphasizes the human dimension of the results. “Behind every statistic in the employment report are people who are taking bold steps to transform their careers, families, and futures,” he writes.

DON’T MISS DARDEN MBA JOBS REPORT 2025: OFFERS SLIP TO 10-YEAR LOW and 2025 MBA JOBS: OFFERS STILL SLUGGISH FOR YALIES, BUT PAY REBOUNDS

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