I’m confused. I keep hearing how college graduates are having trouble finding jobs. However, almost everyone I know got a job pretty much right after they graduated college as well as becoming independent of their parents. What’s going on? I thought it was the norm for people in their mid-20s to be burdens to their parents.
The economy and the job market are much better for new entrants now than it was several years ago.
The easiest answer is that graduating and finding a relevant job doesn’t make for a compelling op-ed piece.
Unlike, for instance, this guy:
http://www.slate.com/articles/business/moneybox/2016/01/student_loan_crisis_at_its_ugliest_i_graduated_and_found_out_i_owe_200_000.html
That story of struggling grads is from a few years ago (those students are still in their 20s, and some of them never really launched, though). The job market is a lot better. There are certainly still grads who don’t get jobs for various reasons, though. And they aren’t all getting the jobs they want. My nephew is holding down two jobs right now – one part time for a liquor distributorship that he hopes will go full time, and still working managing a restaurant on his college campus to make ends meet. His dad is still paying some of his bills, I suspect, and he still lives like a student – in a house near campus with a bunch of guys. He never hustled for an internship in school (spent his college summers as a camp counselor) – so he came out with a really weak resume.
The economy has picked up considerably especially depending on where you live.
The talking heads and politicians just haven’t gotten the memo because it doesn’t fit what they’re trying to sell.
(This is not to say people are getting well-paying, secure/stable jobs… but that is most likely a thing of the past for many of us regardless of when we graduated college.)
Does that mean that a Bachelor’s Degree has become less common? I was under the impression that it was tougher to find a job because almost everybody had a Bachelor’s Degree.
No, just that the economy isn’t that bad anymore and businesses are hiring more.
Why do I keep hearing Soccer is the most popular sport in the world? All of my friends and neighbors are big fans of the local NFL football team, no soccer fans here…
From 2015:
Clearly we know different people…most recent grads we know spent 6-9 months looking for a job and ended up with something okay, but not what they had hoped or planned for. The ones that did have jobs as they graduated were all computer- or hard science majors who earned their job via tuition-for-servitude, ROTC, or nepotism plans. Many, many, more avoid the job search entirely by going to grad school, S1 has worked for 3 years now and is just at the poverty level; his roommate is still in grad school with no plans to stop.
So much of it is regional… and dependent on major, connections, ability to network, and just plain luck.
It also depends on the schools your circle of friends graduate from.
Over the last couple of years, the college grads we know have had no problems finding jobs, regardless of major. the job market is heating up. Over the past year, the folks who work for me are all being contacted aggressively by recruiters.
I thought it was a lot more common to have a Bachelor’s Degree today. And based on what you just said, it would also be common to find a job, but that doesn’t make sense, because not everybody can be victorious.
“that doesn’t make sense, because not everybody can be victorious.”
Why not? Who’s not to benefit from an improving. growing economy?
Pawn shops and payday lenders?
Bankruptcy lawyers and related services?
Also, some low end products and services may see improved sales in an economic downturn because people choose them over high end products and services. This means that they may lose sales to high end products and services when the economy grows. Products and services whose main appeal is cost cutting may also be helped more in an economic downturn than during economic growth.
With D’s friends it seems that about half were offered jobs before they graduated and the rest ended up at post graduation “internships” where they are eventually offered real jobs.