Impactful jobs for sociology degree graduates

Considering a sociology degree, currently studying, or already graduated? This guide will take you through some of the most promising career paths you could enter with a background in sociology.

These aren’t just any careers. At Probably Good, we believe your career is one of the most significant opportunities you have to make a positive difference. With this in mind, in this article, we’ll explore some of the most impactful careers where a sociology degree can open doors and potentially offer unique advantages.

Policy research

Want to have an influence on some of the most important decisions that can be made? Careers in policy research can let you do this. Policy researchers analyze social, economic, and political issues to inform decision making and legislation. This kind of research is often used to positively shape policies implemented by governments, as well as other powerful organizations, like multinational institutions (such as the UN or World Bank). They can also shape public discourse – by popularizing certain policy ideas, policy research organizations can increase public demand for specific policies, making them more likely to be passed by legislators. 

Policy research jobs are available in think tanks, advocacy organizations, or academic institutions, producing reports, white papers, and policy proposals. There are also quite a few roles available within government agencies, meaning there is some overlap between jobs in this path and the civil service.

All policy roles require analytical and writing skills, meaning sociology is a strong degree subject for entering this career path. On top of this, familiarity with both quantitative and qualitative research methods could serve you very well. Though a sociology degree alone may not qualify you for policy roles that need more subject-area expertise, it’s likely a sociology degree will help you get your foot in the door.

How much impact could you have?

Behind the scenes, there’s lots of work that goes into working out which policies to implement, and technical details around how exactly they need to be formulated. Because of this, policy roles can have very high leverage, having a real influence on how large amounts of resources are spent and how important parts of public life are run.

There’s quite a lot of variance in how much good policy research can achieve. It depends on a few important things. The most important is the area of policy you work in. In short, some cause areas will let you have a much more positive impact than others.

Specifically, policy research can be highly impactful if focused on influential decision-making processes and neglected global issues. Well-researched, evidence-based policy recommendations can steer governments and large institutions’ actions in positive ways, and across high-priority cause areas like broad societal improvements, catastrophic risks, global health, artificial intelligence, and international aid.

However, much like with civil service jobs, many roles within policy research will focus on areas that aren’t particularly high priority, such as narrowly domestic problems rather than large-scale, global issues. Though positive impact can still be had, this can impose limits.

Your impact in this role will also depend on the kind of organization you work for. For instance, think tanks are often associated with political parties or specific kinds of politics. If you work for a think tank whose politics aren’t popular, you may find your efforts fail to lead to real-world influence. Similarly, if you work within a government where the incumbent legislators care very little about important cause areas, you may find it difficult to make meaningful progress on these issues.

Policy research salaries

Your pay will depend in part on what kind of organization you work for. For think tanks, Payscale reports an average salary of $67,000. Nonprofit policy research may offer lower salaries but may also be focused on more pressing issues. Government roles often provide more stability, while research in top-tier consulting firms or financial policy organizations may be more lucrative, but offer less obvious routes to impact.

Getting started in policy research

Here are a few practical ideas for actions you can take now to test your personal fit and upskill for high-impact jobs in policy research.

• Look at policy research. Pick one of the think tanks on this list (whichever seems most interesting to you) and take a look at one of their recent research publications. Are there any things you think could be improved? Any important questions they haven’t answered? Could you see yourself doing this kind of research?
• Follow a policy debate. Another idea is to follow a parliamentary committee hearing from whichever country you live in, on a policy topic that interests you. Try to follow along and evaluate participants’ arguments, thinking about what you might in response.
• Try our test task. Take a look at our test task we developed in collaboration with charity evaluator GiveWell. It involves creating either a report or a cost-effectiveness analysis of a global health intervention, and should take a few hours. Even if you’re not interested in global health, this task will give you a good sense of whether you enjoy looking analytically at potential solutions to important problems, just as you would in any form of policy research.

You can also consider pursuing an internship or fellowship related to policy research, which can be available both during or after your degree. We’ve included a few below:

Civil service

Governments are powerful; their decisions have a significant effect on almost all aspects of life within a country – and often influence other countries, too. Keeping a government’s wheels turning requires a workforce of civil servants, who are responsible for almost all aspects of running a country, from developing and maintaining infrastructure, to providing public services, to designing and implementing policies. 

This means that what a civil servant does varies widely. One reason for this is the way that governments are segmented into departments, each with its own focus and culture. For instance, you could easily spend your whole career working in the education department, developing deep knowledge of that department’s work, and have a completely different career than if you’d worked in the treasury, health department, or foreign office.

The types of jobs on offer are also very wide. As you’d expect from any large organization, civil services need all kinds of staff to function well. While the range of opportunities is extensive, many governments streamline entry through standardized pathways, such as graduate schemes. These structured programs provide accessible starting points, allowing you to get familiar with government work before narrowing your focus to a specific department or career track.

For most national government roles, an undergraduate degree is a common requirement. However, subject-specific qualifications are generally flexible, except for more specialized positions—such as those in the treasury, where expertise in mathematics or economics may be necessary. 

However, a sociology degree or major will serve you well for a large share of entry-level civil service jobs, which tend to prioritize general skills over specific expertise. This is because of the strong transferable skills sociology provides – your qualitative and quantitative research skills may also come in useful in various civil service positions.

How much impact could you have?

The civil service can let you have a meaningful influence over how your government tackles important problems. It’s also a career path that’s highly accessible whatever country you’re from, since every government needs a civil service to help it function.

However, if you’re passionate about having a large positive impact within the civil service, it’s important to think about where and how you might be able to do this. Governments are large organizations with a very broad focus, so there’s a lot of variance in how impactful these careers can be. The most promising avenues will likely depend (among other things) on how well-resourced your country’s government is, and the kind of job you’re able to get.

For instance, within high-income countries, your budgets are typically much larger, meaning you may have more leverage. However, the problems within your country (like poor health and extreme poverty) are likely to be less severe than in poorer countries. This makes it more important to pursue areas of work that might have a more global impact, rather than just domestic. This could include helping to improve resilience to pandemics, improving international aid, aiding science and innovation, as well as mitigating potential dangers from artificial intelligence. 

In lower-income countries, this dynamic reverses: there are fewer resources to spend, but there are often much more significant problems affecting people, like poverty and poor health. For instance, lower-income countries often have lax laws and enforcement around dangerous substances like alcohol, tobacco, and lead paint, each of which causes large harm. Because of this, basic regulation, taxation, and enforcement could lead to large health improvements.

As a more general rule, the most impactful roles within government will be ones that grant you more leverage, like those that influence policy design and implementation, oversee significant budgets, and make other strategic decisions. Unfortunately, in many governments, it’s hard to be too selective about the kind of work that you pursue. These are typically large bureaucracies and personal autonomy can often suffer as a result. However, with some strategy, you may be able to carve yourself a career that’s able to influence some of the world’s most important problems.

Civil service salaries

In the US, the Pew Research Center reports an average salary of $106,382 federal government workers as of 2024. Globally, public sector workers tend to have a significant wage premium over workers in the private sector, especially in low- and middle-income countries. This means civil services tend to offer relatively good salaries, though there’s lots of regional variance.

Getting started in the civil service

Here are a few practical ideas for actions you can take now to test your personal fit and upskill for civil service careers.

Work out your point of entry. Getting into the civil service varies quite a lot from country to country. Often, entering the civil service as a new graduate involves a standardized process, like a graduate scheme or entrance exam. Other countries use more typical job listings and applications. Research your own country’s way of doing things and work out what you might need to do to prepare. You can also think about lateral entry – where you enter a civil service as a more senior employee, often with expertise in a specific field.

Volunteer within a local government or a large NGO – Finding volunteer roles at suitable (preferably large) organizations can let you do similar work to what you might do as a civil servant. There are loads of opportunities like these available, but J-PAL’s internship list is a good place to start.

Other relevant careers

The careers explored above are ones that may be particularly advantageous to explore for people with a sociology degree or major. Here, we’ll give a few quick extra examples of careers that may also be a good fit.

Sociology research

Sociology is quite a broad field. Some of it is quite abstract in nature, and involves theorizing about social structures and dynamics. Other research in sociology is more empirical, using both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyze patterns in human behavior and interpret practices.

The primary place where sociological research is conducted is within academia, where researchers will publish in journals (and sometimes books). Alongside this research, sociology academics also typically teach and have other departmental tasks.

Some sociological research could give us insight into important questions for improving the world. Drawing from the work of Effective Thesis, a few areas of research could include:

• Understanding the reasons why social movements succeed or fail.
• How ideas about altruism are formed and spread.
• How public attitudes around important ideas and problems are shaped.
• How and why people make decisions around eating animal products (a source of animal suffering and environmental problems).

However, even though these questions (and many more beyond them) would be useful to research, we suspect it may be difficult to focus on the most impactful sociological work within academia. This is because there are often strong incentives and restrictions regarding the topics you’ll research and teach. You’ll also need a PhD to go into academic sociology research. Getting into a good program is competitive, and there’s no guarantee of a job at the end of it (as is true for many academic subjects).

It’s worth noting academia isn’t your only option; there is some relevant work that happens outside of academia, too. For instance, the Social Change Lab is a nonprofit that conducts research into what makes protest movements likely to succeed. However, we’d expect the total number of promising roles in this area to be quite small.

Journalism

Careers in journalism focus on reporting news and other topics across a range of media, including print, online, TV, radio, and social media. This can take quite a few forms. For instance, some journalism focuses on breaking news, covering important time-sensitive events. Other journalism tackles more persistent issues. Because of the different modes and formats within journalism, a journalist’s day-to-day life can look quite different from one journalist to the next. Some will work primarily from their desk, researching and writing pieces – others may travel, conducting interviews and reports on-site. 

Strong writing and communication skills developed in sociology can also help with clear reporting on complex social issues and events. The social science components of sociology degrees may also help with the more analytical and data-driven approach often found in quality journalism. Sociology’s focus on qualitative methods may also be relevant for conducting and interpreting journalistic interviews.

Note that if you want to step into a journalism career following a sociology degree or major, you’ll need to have some writing you can point potential employers to. Starting a blog, writing for a student publication, or getting freelance work are good ways to build a portfolio.

Spreading good ideas

Careers that let you communicate good ideas at scale, such as content creation, blogging, or even becoming a public intellectual, can help to make impactful ideas and positive values more widespread. 

For instance, the YouTube channel Kurzgesagt produces videos on important topics such as factory farming and catastrophic risks to a massive audience. 

A sociology degree or major is a strong background for these kinds of careers—it’ll give you experience in both the creative and technical sides of communicating with the public. 

However, it’s worth keeping in mind that succeeding in this path is highly unlikely. There are many people competing to have their voices heard in the public sphere, and if you’re putting yourself in the limelight, you may have to develop expertise in a field to be taken seriously.

Roles for career capital

Regardless of the exact career path you go down, often the best way to have an impactful career over the long term is to focus on building useful skills, experience, and connections – known as career capital – early on in your career. Counterintuitively, this can mean taking jobs that aren’t directly impactful, but that might put you in a better place to take highly impactful jobs later on. Here are a few guidelines for opportunities that can offer strong career capital:

• Jobs that offer strong development. Some roles will let you develop skills more quickly than others. For instance, graduate schemes are often focused on giving you professional development, and small, early-stage organizations can often offer more personal mentorship and opportunities to contribute. 
• Jobs in prestigious organizations. Roles in organizations with strong reputations for excellence will look impressive on your CV. They’ll also often give you experience in a high-performing environment, developing your general professional skills. This could include top consultancy firms, tech companies, and financial firms.
• Postgraduate education. Getting further education in your chosen field can unlock more, and sometimes better, opportunities. However, graduate degrees tend to be most useful in technical fields and academia rather than in most of the careers we’ve highlighted for sociology degree graduates.

How does sociology compare to other degrees?

Our sense is that sociology gives you quite a strong general background for a range of careers – in large part because it offers a mixture of both “hard” skills like quantitative and qualitative research methods, as well as softer skills like critical thinking and writing. All of these skills are highly transferable across degree paths.

In fact, the research component of sociology degrees may be something to lean into. Demonstrating some skills in statistical analysis and research design could put you on strong footing for some of the research careers we discussed earlier – especially when combined with the more general critical skills you’ll develop. These “harder” science skills are often required parts of sociology degree programs (depending on your institution), but taking optional courses to further specialize in these areas may be valuable. 

One tradeoff with studying sociology is that, unless you enter a sociology-specific career path (which are limited in number), it’s unlikely you’ll have developed much other subject-area knowledge of high-priority cause areas like climate change, global health, pandemics, or animal welfare that’ll be useful in your role. If you’re passionate about working in a specific area, gaining knowledge and experience in that area will also be highly useful (even more so if it’s something you can demonstrate on a CV).

Expanding your options

It’s important to note that this is just a small selection of the careers that you’ll be in a good position to pursue with a degree in sociology. These are careers that we think have a potential for high positive impact and personal fulfillment, and your degree will put you in a good place to pursue these kinds of jobs.

However, don’t feel limited by these options. Careers are flexible and often take unexpected directions. Your degree will provide a great first step for the jobs discussed in this article, but your true list of options is much larger than it might seem. 
In fact, most graduates (as many as 74%) go into careers unrelated to their degree subject or major. Because of this, it’s well worth keeping an open mind and exploring other paths, too, even if they don’t immediately seem relevant to your education.

What should you do next?

Here are a few suggestions for steps you can take next to plan your career and find great opportunities.

• Read our career advice series for a step-by-step guide on building a career that’s good for you and the world.
• Find great job opportunities on our high-impact job board and explore great internships and fellowships.
• See our career profiles for a full list of impactful careers that we’ve researched.
• Consider applying to our free 1-1 advising service, where we can give you helpful, tailored career advice.