In this in-depth analysis of the Berkeley Haas MBA Salary and Placements outcome for the 2025 graduating class by industry, we cover:
1. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Technology: Still the Largest Employer, but Structurally Repriced
2. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Consulting: Fewer Seats Than Pre-2022, but Compensation Discipline Holds
3. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Financial Services: Bonuses Drive Compensation, Not Base Salary Growth
4. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Energy & Utilities: Hiring stayed meaningful but shifted in profile
1. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Technology: Still the Largest Employer, but Structurally Repriced
Technology remained the single largest destination for Haas MBAs in the Class of 2025, accounting for 38.6% of total hires, reversing part of the multi-year contraction seen between 2021 and 2024, when tech hiring fell from 34.1% to 24%. The 2025 rebound does not represent a return to the post-pandemic hiring surge; rather, it reflects selective rehiring concentrated in revenue-linked and infrastructure-critical roles, particularly within software and internet services.
Software Roles Lead in Placements and Salary at Berkeley Haas MBA
Within technology, software roles alone accounted for 19.6% of total class placements, making them the core driver of the sector’s recovery. Median base salaries of $160,000, paired with a $20,000 signing bonus, place software compensation slightly above Haas’s 2024 technology median of $150,000 and close to the 2023 peak of $157,100. This stabilization aligns with Q3 2024–Q2 2025 industry patterns, where hiring resumed primarily in enterprise software, AI-enabled platforms, and revenue-generating product lines rather than consumer tech or experimental bets.
Internet Services and E-Commerce Employers – Lower Base Salary Higher Bonus
Internet services and e-commerce roles, representing 8.5% of hires, displayed a different compensation profile. While base salaries remained moderate at $142,800, the median signing bonus of $54,300 pushed total compensation close to $197,100. This skew toward bonuses mirrors industry behaviour during 2024–25, where firms limited fixed cost expansion but used upfront incentives to secure talent for monetization, marketplace optimization, and growth recovery roles after two years of demand normalization.
Capital Intensive Hardware, Networking and General Technology – In the $155,000 to $165,000 Range
Hardware, networking, and general technology roles together formed a smaller share (≈9.8% combined), with total compensation ranging between $156,750 and $165,000. This composition reflects the continued slowdown in capital-intensive hardware investment and semiconductor-linked expansion during 2024–25, particularly on the West Coast, where Haas traditionally places heavily. Compared to 2022–23, when aggressive hiring drove tech salaries upward, the 2025 outcome signals a structurally leaner, execution-oriented tech market rather than a cyclical rebound.
2. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Consulting: Fewer Seats Than Pre-2022, but Compensation Discipline Holds
Consulting absorbed 26.8% of the Class of 2025, marking a modest recovery from 25% in 2024 but remaining well below its 2021–2022 plateau near 28–29%. The hiring share confirms that the demand for Haas MBA graduates has stabilized rather than expanded, consistent with firm-level headcount discipline observed across strategy consultancies during Q3 2024–Q2 2025.
Compensation at Berkeley Haas MBA Consulting Roles: Median Salaries – Stabilized at $190000
Despite restrained hiring volumes, median base salary held firm at $190,000, matching 2023–24 levels and extending a four-year salary increase of ≈15% since 2021. The absence of downward salary adjustment indicates that firms protected pricing for MBA talent even while reducing intake, prioritizing experienced, execution-ready hires over broad cohort expansion.
The sustained compensation reflects the nature of consulting demand in 2024–25. According to industry trend documentation, firms shifted work toward cost restructuring, operating model redesign, AI integration, and portfolio rationalization, all of which require smaller but more senior-ready teams. Haas graduates’ exposure to technology-adjacent and sustainability-linked consulting engagements likely aligned with this shift, helping preserve offer quality even as hiring volumes remained capped.
Berkeley Haas Trail Behind Kellogg and Ross in Representation but At Par in Compensation
Relative to peer schools, Haas continues to trail consulting-heavy programs such as Kellogg and Ross in placement share, but the 2025 data suggests reduced volatility compared to schools that experienced sharper consulting pullbacks. In practical terms, consulting at Haas in 2025 functioned as a high-price, low-volume channel, not a mass recruiter.
Question 1: What makes you feel alive when you are doing it, and why? (300 words maximum) (Video Essay)
Question 2: What are your short-term and long-term career goals, and how will an MBA from Haas help you achieve those goals? Short-term career goals should be achievable within 3-5 years post-MBA, whereas long-term goals may span a decade or more and encompass broader professional aspirations. (300 words max)
Question 3: Distance Traveled: At Berkeley Haas, we consider "distance traveled" as the contextual information that helps us understand the unique circumstances, challenges, or influences that have shaped your personal and professional journey.
We invite you to share aspects of your background, personal circumstances, or significant experiences that have meaningfully impacted who you are today and how you've reached this point. Please tell us how these experiences have influenced your perspectives, decisions, and aspirations, and how they contribute to the person you are becoming. (300 words max)
3. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Financial Services: Bonuses Drive Compensation, Not Base Salary Growth
Financial Services accounted for 15.7% of Class of 2025 placements, continuing the steady expansion observed from 12.3% in 2021 to 16% in 2024. While still smaller than consulting and technology, finance has become Haas’s most consistently growing industry over the past four cycles, particularly within deal-linked and capital markets roles.
Investment Banking the Biggest Contributor to Berkeley Haas’ Finance Industry Growth Story
Investment Banking formed the largest sub-segment, with 6.5% of the class entering IB roles. Base salaries remained fixed at $175,000, unchanged from 2022–24, but median signing bonuses rose to $61,250, pushing total compensation to $236,250, the highest across all industries. This structure mirrors IB hiring behaviour in 2024–25, where banks limited class sizes but competed aggressively on bonuses amid episodic deal reopenings rather than sustained volume growth.
PE and VC – Slows Down at Berkeley Haas Despite an Impressive $170,500 Base Salary
Private Equity and Venture Capital together accounted for 4.6% of placements, with a median base salary of $170,500. The absence of reported signing bonuses is consistent with VC/PE compensation norms during a period of constrained fundraising, slower exits, and extended holding periods, as documented in 2024–25 industry reports. Compared to the 2021–22 cycle, when PE hiring was more aggressive, the 2025 data indicate selective lateral-style recruitment rather than pipeline hiring.
Outlier Trend: FinTech – A Rare Representation at Berkeley Haas MBA
FinTech roles represented 3.9% of hires, reflecting the sector’s continued recalibration following the 2022–23 funding contraction. Base salaries at $150,000 place fintech closer to technology compensation bands than traditional finance, reinforcing the sector’s hybrid positioning rather than a return to growth-era pay premiums.
Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Finance: Bonus Compensated the Moderate Base Salary to a Competitive Offering
Across financial services, Haas’s 2025 outcome reflects bonus-led compensation resilience without base salary inflation, a pattern consistent with elevated interest rates, uneven deal flow, and investor caution throughout Q3 2024–Q2 2025
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4. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Energy & Utilities: Hiring stayed meaningful but shifted in profile
Capital continued to flow into the energy transition in 2024–25 (record global clean-energy investment and rising grid & transmission spending), but the spending profile shifted from early-stage hiring (project startups) to large, longer-cycle infrastructure projects that hire more selectively and for different skill sets (grid engineers, project finance, commercial development). That structural change compresses MBA seat counts even as total sector investment rises, firms hire fewer MBAs but at roles tied to project execution and commercial structuring rather than volume recruiting.
Energy Placements at Berkeley Haas: Above 5% Representation
In 2025, Energy/Utilities hired 5.2% of Haas MBAs (median base $150,000, signing bonus $15,000, total $165,000). That is a modest decline from Haas’s 2024 share (~6.0%) but still well above the 2021–22 trough, showing the industry remains a consistent channel for Haas students.
5. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Healthcare/Biotech/Pharma: 2025 contraction in Haas hiring driven by funding and workforce dynamics
At Berkeley Haas 2025 Graduating Class, Healthcare experienced a sharp decline in healthcare placements. Private capital in many healthcare sub-segments (digital health, early-stage biotech) remained constrained through 2024–25, tightening the number of MBA-level commercial hires at startups.
Investments Shifted from Healthcare to AI, Hospitals and Integrated Care
Healthcare accounted for 3.3% of Haas hires in 2025 (median base $144,000). That is down materially from Haas’s 2024 healthcare share (~8.0%) and from the 2022–23 rebound trend.
Provider systems (hospitals, integrated care) were hiring heavily for clinical and frontline roles to address staffing shortages, but these vacancies do not always translate into MBA hires; hospitals prioritized operational hires and clinical staffing over new MBA leadership roles in the short term.
Specialist Prioritized Over Generalist Talent Offered at Berkeley Haas MBA
McKinsey’s 2024–25 provider and workforce analyses highlight both the persistent shortage of clinical staff and a pivot toward reimbursement-and-efficiency initiatives, roles that require specialized health operations or payer knowledge rather than broad MBA generalists. That combination lowered the absolute number of Haas MBAs placed in healthcare in 2025 even though the sector’s strategic importance rose.
6. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG): fewer hires but targeted, bonus offers for commercial skillsets
CPG took 2.6% of Haas hires in 2025 (median base $131,000, median signing bonus $35,000, total $166,000).
Compared with Haas’s 2024 CPG share (~6.0%), this is a clear contraction.
The proximate causes are practical: 2024 saw CPG companies move from inflationary price-pass-through to volume restoration, then in 2024–25 firms refocused on margin recovery and automation.
As Deloitte/Bain/ KPMG reports from 2024–25 show, CPG employers concentrated hiring on digital, data-driven commercial skills (ecommerce, pricing analytics, revenue management) while shrinking traditional broad brand management pipelines.
Because companies compete for a small pool of candidates with both brand and analytics experience, they increasingly use signing bonuses and targeted lateral hiring rather than broad MBA intake, which matches Haas’s 2025 pattern (lower share, but relatively high bonuses for the selected hires).
7. Berkeley Haas MBA Salary in Real Estate: demand compressed by interest rate environment
Real Estate hired 2.0% of Haas MBAs in 2025 (median base $110,000), down from ~2.9% in 2024 and far below the 2022 peak years.
The primary driver is macro: sustained higher interest rates and slower transaction markets through 2024–25 reduced capital deployment and transactional hiring (investment sales, acquisitions, development).
CBRE and other real-estate intelligence reports from 2024–25 documented elevated vacancies, slower capital markets, and structural caution among asset managers; firms that would normally recruit MBAs prioritized small specialist teams or delayed hires until liquidity and cap-rate visibility improved. That produced both a lower share of MBA hires and a weaker compensation profile versus previous cycles. Expect hiring to recover only as capital markets and transaction volumes normalize.
Industry | Percent of Hires | Median Base Salary | Median signing bonus | Total Salary |
| Technology/Telecom | 38.6% | $159,000 | $30,000 | $189,000 |
| Equipment/Hardware/Networking | 3.9% | $150,000 | $15,000 | $165,000 |
| General | 5.9% | $142,500 | $14,250 | $156,750 |
| Internet Services/E-commerce | 8.5% | $142,800 | $54,300 | $197,100 |
| Software | 19.6% | $160,000 | $20,000 | $180,000 |
| Consulting | 26.8% | $190,000 | $30,000 | $220,000 |
| Financial Services | 15.7% | $175,000 | $53,250 | $228,250 |
| Financial Tech | 3.9% | $150,000 | NA | NA |
| Investment Banking | 6.5% | $175,000 | $61,250 | $236,250 |
| VC/PE | 4.6% | $170,500 | NA | NA |
| Energy/Utilities | 5.2% | $150,000 | $15,000 | $165,000 |
| Healthcare/Biotech/Pharma | 3.3% | $144,000 | NA | NA |
| Consumer Products | 2.6% | $131,000 | $35,000 | $166,000 |
| Real Estate | 2% | $110,000 | NA | NA |
Final Verdict
The Good
1. Technology made a comeback to represent the largest hires at 38.6% in 2025 from the lows of 24% in the past 5 years with an impressive $160,000 median base salary.
2. Financial Services accounted for 15.7% of Class of 2025 placements, continuing the steady expansion observed from 2021 to 16% with the standardized $175,000 median base salary.
3. In 2025 Energy/Utilities hired 5.2% of Haas MBAs (median base $150,000, signing bonus $15,000, total $165,000), a modest decline from Haas’s 2024 share (~6.0%) but still well above the 2021–22 trough.
The Bad
1. At Berkeley Haas 2025 MBA Graduating Class, Healthcare experienced a sharp decline in placements: 3.3% of Haas hires in 2025 (median base $144,000), down from 8.0%