I saw the Emory stats and had the same reaction. Great that they're publishing it, and also a little scary! One important thing to consider is that many students are going straight from undergrad, so they have zero work experience when they graduate. The pay for those with work experience is likely higher. Another is that the cost of living in Atlanta is pretty low (at least compared to the Northeast where I'm from), so the salary figures are a lot better than they seem at first glance. I'm actually a PhD applicant, and am considering going to Emory. They sent us a list of employment for recent PhD grads, and it looked pretty good. Only one person in a postdoc. The rest were in industry or academia. Obviously, academia is very competitive, but the outlook for public health grads in academia seems a bit better than it is in the humanities at least, since many public health grads decide to go into industry or government instead.