Top Employers Still Hire Only About 1 In 6 MBAs, Study Finds

A year ago, a study of where MBAs actually land after business school found that only 13% of graduates from top programs started at one of the 10 most common employers. This year’s update tells much the same story.

About 1 in 6 MBA grads from the Class of 2025 – 17.3% – took a first job at one of the 10 most common employers, according to a new study by Laura Nelson of MBA Pathfinders and Alex Hamilton of Live Data Technologies. The analysis tracks 3,177 graduates from 20 leading U.S. programs about a year after they finished, using public professional records rather than school surveys.

“In a strong job market or a weak one, we’re seeing that roughly one in six graduates lands at a top-10 employer,” Hamilton writes. “That concentration hasn’t changed drastically, and for anyone looking for roles, the opportunities we can see in the data sit in a long tail of thousands of employers.”

The 20 programs are Carnegie Mellon Tepper, Chicago Booth, Columbia, Cornell Johnson, Dartmouth Tuck, Duke Fuqua, Emory Goizueta, Georgetown McDonough, Harvard, Indiana Kelley, Michigan Ross, MIT Sloan, Northwestern Kellogg, NYU Stern, Stanford GSB, Texas McCombs, UCLA Anderson, UVA Darden, Wharton and Yale SOM.

A STEADY SHARE, YEAR AFTER YEAR

Last year’s analysis drew on a broader set of schools, so the researchers recalculated every class on the same 20 programs. On that basis, the Class of 2024 share is 14.6%. Going back to 2016, the share of first jobs at the 10 most common employers has ranged from 14.6% to 21.1%, the researchers found, and no single employer has taken more than about 1 in 20 of a class in any year.

Consulting dominates the top of the list. Five of the 10 most common employers are consulting firms, three are in finance, and two are in tech. BCG took 4.2% of first jobs and McKinsey 3.4%. Amazon, the No. 1 employer last year, slipped to No. 3. When employers that appear under several names – Amazon and AWS, JPMorgan’s three entries, EY and EY-Parthenon – are combined, the top 10 account for about 19% of first jobs.

Hamilton says ranks shift a little from year to year because each class is a one-year sample. Amazon’s share of first jobs dipped in 2023 and 2024 and partly recovered in 2025, he says, and tech’s overall share follows the same pattern. The data shows where graduates went, not why, so the researchers can’t say whether AI played a role.

“While the value proposition of an MBA is evolving, we’re still seeing similar hiring patterns,” Nelson writes. “Top consulting firms and banks are still coming to campus through structured recruiting programs, and MBAs are finding a place at a number of companies we call the ‘long tail.’ While we consistently see op-eds about the death of the degree, the overall trend is pretty similar.”

STARTUPS HAND OUT MANAGER TITLES SOONER

The study also looks at starting level by employer size. Among 2,837 graduates whose employer size is known, 43.1% of those at startups (250 or fewer employees) started at Manager level or above, compared with 39.7% at mid-market companies and 30.6% at large enterprises with more than 5,000 employees.

The researchers caution that a manager title doesn’t always mean more responsibility.

“An individual contributor role at a larger company isn’t the same in day-to-day scope as it used to be,” Hamilton writes. “With AI, many companies now expect individual contributors to cover more ground than before, so a smaller share of manager titles doesn’t necessarily mean a worse outcome.”

SCHOOLS LOOK MORE ALIKE THAN THEIR REPUTATIONS

Across the seven programs with at least 100 graduates on record – Chicago Booth, Columbia, Harvard, Kellogg, Michigan Ross, NYU Stern and Wharton – finance and consulting together took between 34% of first jobs at Ross and 55% at Columbia and Wharton.

“Some people get caught up in ‘Kellogg for consulting’ or ‘this school is a finance school,’ when, in reality, it’s a pretty similar mix across the most popular post-MBA career paths,” Nelson writes.

The study’s figures won’t line up with schools’ official employment reports. Hamilton says the biggest gap is in Wharton finance, where the school’s reported share in financial services runs well above the study’s broad finance group. The study groups graduates by their employer’s industry rather than their role, measures outcomes about a year out instead of three months, and only captures graduates with a public career record. That means it misses salary, deferred offers and anyone with little online presence.

“Employment reports tell you where graduates are three months out,” Hamilton tells Poets&Quants. “Public facing career records aggregated show where they are years later, which is the question applicants increasingly ask.”

WHAT THE STUDY DOESN’T SHOW

The analysis includes only graduates with a first job on record. Hamilton says most graduates in the data for these programs have one, while the rest either haven’t updated their public profiles or are still searching. The researchers consider the 2025 figures provisional, and the shares may rise as records update. The study makes no claims about cause, salary or location.

Nelson and Hamilton are now running a 10-year study of MBA graduates from 2016 onward, tracking how fast they reach manager level, how often they switch fields and how many start companies.

Nelson’s write-up appears on Behind the MBA, and the charts and methodology are on Live Data’s site.

DON’T MISS ONLY 13% OF MBAs LAND AT TOP EMPLOYERS, NEW STUDY FINDS

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