ucbalumnus, here is the whole quote from my post: “I read somewhere, sorry can’t cite, that 82% of college grads are living at home. Not sure of the demographics involved since this could include young people who commuted, and possible even adults who went to school while working.”
There are a lot of majors nowadays where getting a job isn’t a problem, the key is actually liking what you do enough to not dread it everyday for 40 years. There will always be jobs in nursing, teaching, service industry, etc., but if you don’t like the work in those fields, it’s not the way to go. The OP isn’t asking about clear cut paths, but those that don’t have a plan laid out. What can be important to those is to find almost any entry level job in their industry that exposes them to business or whatever it is that interests them, and allows them to meet people and grow confidence. Being isolated post college is not healthy.
Not a lot of confidence in the list of colleges/jobs by state, their criteria is based on data that likely varies greatly in reliability at each college.
Nobody needs to do the same thing for 40 years. It evolves as you move from job to job. I told my kids focus on an industry and let the jobs roll.
I was surprised that my DD and a group of her friends have all struggled quite a bit after HS. They were all high achievers and haven’t seemed to have found their paths yet. DD graduated college 2 years ago, kept her retail job, and is planning to start classes to go into nursing school.
She and her friends have dealt with depression and anxiety issues. DD has had some serious health issues and got married in that time. Due to an unexpected health issue, her DH has had to totally change his life plan and career path.
Definitely not what I expected and hard because her childhood friend is well on her way to a great career and lots of international travel. I have to remind her that we all take our own paths and there are plenty of years ahead.
I wish I knew how to help her. She was always a take charge kid but big rule follower and I think being on her own has thrown her. Also, all of the options available to kids today has kind of paralyzed her at the same time.
Just checking back in here and wow…I can’t tell you all how helpful all the comments and advice have been. I will try and pass along some good ideas and we’ll see how it goes. My big concern is, as one said - isolation post-college is not a good thing. I can already see his frustrations at living back under his parent’s roof again. I am in that unhappy place that he doesn’t want advice/suggestions/interference, yet he doesn’t seem to have much direction left to his own devices. Did I say just his frustrations? Guess that is for both of us 
I agree that post-college isolation is difficult. What makes it more difficult for your son ( it appears) is that he seems to be a bit “frozen” right now. He doesn’t want your help, but at the same time he is not taking the initiative to figure out some kind of plan. They are all different. He may need the year to live at home ( unhappily), get a job for some spending money, and have some time to figure it out. It will eventually happen.
Read the whole thread which makes me exponentially even more grateful than I have been for my son and his wife who both landed good jobs in their fields (data science and engineering) right out of college, and neither has debt.
One thing that’s been interesting, though, is the reaction from some people when I tell them where they chose to live (Phoenix? I’d never live there! Arizona! Why did they have to choose Arizona? Ick!). They are doing great there, and their MIT friends come to visit them all the time. I don’t think they’ll stay, but it’s been really good for both of them.
So yes to the idea of relocating to find a job even to a location that might seem less than ideal to some.
And I have one son who’s at home at age 21 still trying to get back on track (withdrew from college); lots of different kids require different approaches.
I am following too… It has been a while of course, but I remember the 20’s as being very difficult and a lot of hard work (professionally). I remember being more anxious than excited about graduating college, and I don’t tend to have anxiety.
@mainelonghorn - I had to laugh. My D is also a rising Junior, double-majoring in History and Anthropology…
This is not accurate. The Bureau of Labor Statistics realizes that counting only people who collect UI would result in gross underestimation. They actually estimate the unemployment rate based on a monthly survey called the Current Population Survey, conducted monthly by the Census Bureau within a representative sample of about 110,000 individuals in the Untied States. You can read more about the survey and how the government measure unemployment here: https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
And since we’re doing data, check out this pretty awesome report from the Center on Education and the Workforce at Georgetown: https://cew.georgetown.edu/cew-reports/the-summer-surge-in-college-unemployment/
There’s an infographic and a full report. But the general gist is that the unemployment rate always ticks upwards at the beginning of the summer, triggering a fresh wave of worrying from the media and parents about the perceived lower value of a college degree. It’s simply because the workforce is trying to absorb all these new graduates; unemployment rates are cyclical. They go up in the summer, and decrease every fall.
One thing that colleges don’t tell parents is that it’s common for new grads (especially graduates in non-professional majors) to take 3-9 months after graduation to find a full-time job. That’s why colleges report their placement statistics 3+ months out from graduation (law schools, I believe, report as many as 9 months out). It’s also one of the reasons that although the Census Bureau measures employment from people ages 16 and up, many magazines and media outlets report the 25+ employment rate and median income. It’s actually less common for students to have a job lined up at graduation - one survey by Accenture Strategy found that only 12% of class of 2015 had jobs lined up by graduation. (http://time.com/money/3857107/college-graduates-career-ready-overconfident/).
My daughter wants to be an osteopath, but her grades were not high enough to get her in directly from college. After considering moving back in with me in Brooklyn or to the Boston area where she could start out with close family members, she got a job as a patient care technician (nurse’s aide?) in a hospital in the city where she went to school. She graduated on May 11 and started orientation on May 13. I was amazed! She also got her EMT certification and plans on picking up some extra shifts after she takes her MCAT next month. Plus she’s learned the value of a shift differential.
At my suggestion she picked up a really cheap summer sublet, and will be moving to the more expensive apartment I cosigned for (as expected) early in August. Financially it will be a little tight but she’ll manage. Needless to say, it’s a lot cheaper to live in Rochester, NY than in Brooklyn!
Last week she got a dog (a rescue from a shelter, adopted on a weekend when adoption fees were waived). She knows she can’t complain to me about how much he costs, but I think she really thought it through and she really really wanted one and loves him, and I, not really a dog person, am infatuated with my granddog. I am going up there the first week in August to help her move, and she just asked me if I could help her with budgeting when I’m up there. OMG, I never thought I would hear those words!
I must say that my anxiety level about her (single parent, only child) is way down.
Daughter graduated in May and will start a new job locally on Monday. I am realizing that she had a change in mood. and was getting frustrated. A few days ago she told me how she felt lonely. I encouraged her to keep meeting with high school and college friends. When she starts job orientation with the new recruits they all seem to be recent college graduates so I am hoping they get along and she develops another circle of friends at work.
I felt at times she was feeling sad and I tried to encourage her to stay positive and that indeed it would be a big change but that it would also be an exciting time in her life and to take it as a new journey. I truly hope she enjoys her new job but she says she is looking forward to going back to grad school after a gap year.
“I will follow this thread! My D is only a rising college junior, but I’m already stressed about her future. Not sure what she will do with her photography and art history majors. And she’s made it clear she’s a “fine arts photographer,” not a commercial one. ???”
@MaineLonghorn my daughter in law is about six months into launching her own business as a professional (wedding, family, baby) photographer. She is earning about what she had been earning at a previous, unrelated, job. We know another family friend who is working for a national newspaper as a sports photographer. Another family friend is about 6 years into a freelance sports photography business.
I know your daughter wants to work as a fine arts photographer, but it is also a business.
Both my DIL and our family friends worked for professional photographers during their four years of undergrad. One sports photographer majored in journalism and was focused on sports photography at his unuversity’s newspaper. One took years to start earning a living wage as a freelancer. My DIL took a job with a photographer just as something that sounded interesting as a part time job as a freshman in college. She learned about the business end of it and also learned technique and editing from four years as an assistant. That part time job, completely unrelated to her major, became a passion.
Anyway, my point is that maybe your daughter needs to find a photographer to work for (paid or as a volunteer) to get a sense of what its like to be a photographer. Lots of weird, long hours, and many more hours spent editing. It also helps to have an extroverted personality, a knack for salesmanship, and comfort in self promotion in social media.
For fine art photography, it helps to have a day job. It takes quite a while to build a career in any art form in this country. She could also go to grad school and teach Many artists seem to work for non-profits but I know wonderful artists who are nurses, school staff, accountants etc.
I thought uncertainty was normal, even healthy.
Mix fine arts photograph with commercial. You get by the best of both.
Oh, my goodness, this topic definitely hits home. My DS graduated last year from a very small, very close knit LAC, and he has struggled a bit ever since. Many of his friends started jobs, while he chose to attend graduate school in a new city. He has struggled with the classwork, as well as making friends, and he’s become very anxious about his future. We keep telling him to just calm down and everything will work out okay, but he is constantly berating himself for choices he made in undergrad, and he’s not sure what he wants to do with his life. Interestingly enough, many of his friends who have jobs are not particularly happy and are not sure what they want to do either. And his grad school acquaintances seem to be in the same boat, which is rather discouraging. I really wish his school had placed more of an emphasis on preparing for life after college, because it comes as a shock. After 22 years of living a fairly scripted life, the real world is completely different. And I don’t know about anyone else’s kid, but our DS stopped listening to our advice when he left for undergrad, so maybe hearing it from someone else would have had an impact. Or he will have to learn from the “school of hard knocks,” which is what my husband and I had to do. Still, it makes me sad to see him anxious and stressed out.
Mine was all set with her new (very nice) job. He boyfriend was to quit his job as he also had a new job lined up in the same city. Now his old employer is sweetening the offer and he wants to put of his move for 5 months. Great, except she doesnt’ want to move twice. She just wants to get on with her life! I say get a short term furnished rental, which costs more but includes internet, utilities, etc, and she can then move and find someplace at her leisure.
Or get a new boyfriend.
My D who graduated in May has lined up an acting apprenticeship at a professional regional theater; which is wonderful for her. Unfortunately it hardly pays so she will have to find a subsistence job that is flexible enough to fit around her commitments with the theater. Fortunately she has saved some money so has some cushion. She has found a Roommate she met for first time while apartment hunting, has signed a lease, and will move to her new city later this summer. Then will start job hunting there. My H and I figure this will be the start of likely several (if not many) years of piecing things together to make her life work while she pursues her dream. As a risk averse person, this would freak me out for myself but strangely I have every confidence that she can support herself one way or another. It’s her life and good for her to go after what she wants. If she fails or decides to do something else she will know she tried and not have to look back and wonder “what if.”
This makes me think of something someone with adult kids told me when my kids were little, “Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems.” I’m just now sending my first off to college and this thread has me worrying ahead after college lol. When does it end :((
Mine starts her new job on Tuesday. She’s leaving home tomorrow to go to her new car, her new apt, and her new job. All grown up.
The other decided to take the dreaded math class this summer so will graduate in Dec. She is thinking of doing Americorps at some point in the future.
I’m going to haul out some advice that I’ve posted before. Short version: A (first) job rarely makes or defines a career. Don’t demand perfection with the first job.
Who here among the 'rents had one job or even one career that they began right out of college and continued until they retired? I would venture that this is less than 25%. It hasn’t gone that way for the last couple of generations. I’ve used this metaphor before. A career is a ‘climbing wall.’ Not even a ladder with well-defined and reachable steps up a specific hierarchy.
As a climbing wall, a career is something one begins, but to advance further one may have to make a sideways move, or a downward move, or even “get off the wall” for a spell perhaps for more training, relocating, or addressing family contingencies. A good starting job might provide contacts and experience that will not only pay the rent but make opportunities for subsequent job changes.
My son has had 3 or 4 jobs (employers) in the last 15 years while broadening his experience and building an excellent career b/c he’s ambitious, energetic, and willing to learn new things. My daughter “got off the wall” and went back to school for another degree, and thus made a career course correction. Numerous employers and consultancies along the way, but after 12 years now a large employer and interesting job that brings much of her experience and training together.