<p>I thought things were getting better. They are not.</p>
<p>Jobs</a> Outlook Is Bleak Even for College Graduates, NYT article</p>
<p>Why would this be a surprise? Current unemployment is above 9%, underemployment could be as high as 20%,and seeing college grads having a difficult time finding a job should surprise NOBODY…another weak article by the Times</p>
<p>Not news but the details were interesting and depressing, such as the mean starting salary is $27 in 2010, down from $30k in 2006; that only 56% have obtained employment since last spring, and only half of those jobs require a degree.</p>
<p>The stats are discouraging.</p>
<p>Underemployment is a huge problem. My husband has electrical engineers working for his company at 12 bucks an hour doing low level tech jobs. One guy is in his early 40’s, graduated a couple of years ago, huge debt and no better prospects. Another is mid 20’s with a wife and baby, both with sizable college debt, unemployed for nearly a year before he got the tech job. Two more are 2010’s who took the tech jobs after months of looking for a “real” job. My son graduates in December with his EE degree. Thank God he will have very little debt. He also has a well paid internship this summer, with excellent prospects for a January hire. But who knows what will happen in 6 months.</p>
<p>i recommend listening to Peter Schiff who predicted the current economic situation in 2006. search him in youtube. he has many great points that can help understand the situation</p>
<p>The article says that the median starting salary is 27K. However, if I google the starting salary for college graduates, I find it to be around 50K. Could anyone explain this discrepancy?</p>
<p>One is all jobs held by college grads and the other is jobs they needed the college degree to get. For example many college grads will become Starbucks help, retail clerks or waitroids. Don’t need a degree for that.</p>
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<p>Didn’t read the article, but what exactly do they mean by being employed? DId they say? I hate it when news pieces don’t reveal the true facts. Being “employed” could mean crappy temp jobs that offer no health care or benefits, part time work, or being underemployed. The picture is probably even more grim if you look under the hood at the details.</p>
<p>Here are some <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys.html</a> .</p>
<p>The other thing too is that money isn’t worth as much so like $30,000 a couple years ago is like $50,000 now. So if they are making $25,000 thats like half as much money. That’s called the time value of money.</p>
<p>^ I don’t think that inflation is quite THAT bad! ;)</p>
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<p>Prices for homes, stocks, food, energy, etc. dropped sharply in 2008. In March 2009, you could have picked up the $INDU at 6,500. Today, it’s at 12,500. So you could conclude that our currency has lost half of its purchasing power. However some things are going up and some things are going down. If you want to buy a home, you’re going to be paying less than you were in 2005. If you want to buy energy, you’re paying about what you paid in the energy bubble several years ago. If you want to buy computing power, it’s dirt-cheap compared to anytime in history. Big-screen TVs are a lot cheaper now. If you want to hire someone to do landscaping or to teach your kids Chinese, you may find that it’s cheaper now than it was in 2000.</p>
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<p>No.</p>
<p>The time value of money is the value of money figuring in a given amount of interest earned over a given amount of time.</p>
<p>– Wikipedia</p>
<p>Take a course in finance. Please. And learn before you speak.</p>
<p>It all depends on the field of study. </p>
<p>Examples:</p>
<p>D of a friend, graduated from NYU in Business. Got a job at Goldman last year. D of another friend, graduated from UIUC accounting last year. Got a job at a major accounting firm. D of a colleague, graduated a week ago from Emory in Business. Got a job offer a year ago from JPM Chase, one year before her graduation. D of an old classmate, graduated two years ago from Wash U in Psychology. Still have no job after two years. Gave up hope and staying at home with Mom and Dad. S of a friend, graduated 3 years ago from UW Milwaukee in Biology. Can’t find a steady job. Now going back to graduate school studying accounting. S of a friend, graduated from Purdue in Business four years ago. Got a job a GE in sales. Extremely happy today. The D in law is a nurse practitioner, graduated two years ago from a local directional U, also gainfully employed.</p>
<p>And they say those business majors are dumb. I have been saying that since the downturn. Unless you go to an IVY or similar you can have a very tough time finding a job with a liberal arts major. So if you are not quite Ivy material but still very bright a business or engineering/computer science degree from a Top 75 or so school will still put you in line for a good job. Maybe not Goldman (although they will take maybe half a dozen per school) but places like GE and major commercial banks, accting/consulting firms, and Fortune 500 companies in professional type jobs (not folding shirts at Target or the Gap). These are $50K+ jobs with full benefits and a future.</p>
<p>I recently attended a large college gathering. When asked “Who is a Psych major” at least one-third raised a hand. What do those kids think they are going to do with a psych major after college? Or a sociology major? Or one of those new majors like “Hispanic studies” or “women’s studies”? </p>
<p>Today’s students really need to be realistic and prepare for the very bad economic outlook which could last for decades. </p>
<p>Major in something that will get them a good job. Take on little or no debt. Get work experience.</p>
<p>"I recently attended a large college gathering. When asked “Who is a Psych major” at least one-third raised a hand. What do those kids think they are going to do with a psych major after college? Or a sociology major? "</p>
<p>er, marketing? advertising? I mean its great and all if you love a genuinely quantitative field. But Im not convinced that folks with “soft” business majors do any better in those fields than folks with liberal arts majors.</p>
<p>Job outlook bleak </p>
<p>This speaks to the value of a liberal arts education.</p>
<p>I majored in economics. I learned the macro economic tools that enable fiscal policy to address a failure of aggregate demand. Hence, I believed a prolonged severe period of semi-depression conditions was no longer possible.</p>
<p>Had I spent more time on political science, psychology, American Studies, anthropology, I might have better understood the forces that would grip a nation into not using the most obvious tools to deal with a problem, and to blame everyone from colleges to immigrants - or, most ironically, the very policies that kept the problem from being worse - for it.</p>
<p>Feh!</p>
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<p>Maybe should say “These are $50K+ jobs with full benefits”. Remember an outfit called Lehman Brothers?</p>
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<p>Applied math, economics, statistics, and physics generally have decent job and career prospects.</p>