The recession may be over, but this year’s seniors will not be reaping the benefits of a renewed economy yet.

A study by the National Association of Colleges and Employers found the average salary offer for this year’s graduating senior class is down 1.7 percent from 2009.

However, the bad news doesn’t apply to everyone. In today’s market, immediate financial success is all in the major.

Computer-related degrees are worth on average 5.8 percent more than last year, while computer-science majors specifically will see a pay increase of 4.7 percent.

Engineers are also sitting pretty, with electrical engineers expecting a 3-percent salary increase and chemical and civil engineers seeing a 1.5-percent increase.

Veronica Perrigan, the assistant director for student services at the Engineering Co-op and Career Services Center, said technical jobs such as engineering often see higher salaries.

“Most technical positions are still in demand, which keeps salaries up,” Perrigan said. “Employers must offer competitive salaries to obtain, and also retain, the best and the brightest.”

But other majors did not fare quite as well as their engineering counterparts. Those with liberal arts degrees on average will see salaries declining 8.9 percent from last year. And business administration and management majors are not much better off, with salaries down 8 percent from 2009. Marketing degrees are also down in value, with salaries falling by more than 2 percent.

Senior marketing major Sue O’Neill was surprised to hear the statistics, but said in her experience applying for jobs, she hadn’t noticed lower salaries.

“If anything was affected by the recession, the most that I saw was that fewer companies were hiring,” O’Neill said. “I didn’t notice significant salary changes.”

But finance professor Russ Wermers explained that even though companies are beginning to hire employees again, the salaries will not be immediately comparable to the past.

“Hiring by companies generally lags improvements in profits,” Wermers said.

Perrigan also said students in the engineering school at the university provide employers with “productive new employees from day one, eliminating the need for a big learning curve and saving them money.”

farrell@umdbk.com