A nice article appeared in the Washington Post yesterday detailing the difficulty that graduates from the Class of 2008 have been having finding employment (see Graduates’ Job Hunts: Majorly Frustrating). In that article, Nancy Trejos follows the plight of several recent graduates, all of whom are either unemployed or underemployed.

During robust economic times, college students in undergraduate and graduate school programs would easily get multiple offers. As the economy teeters on the edge of recession, college graduates this year face a tough job market, leaving many without work in their fields or doing jobs that people without college degrees can do…

I do not dispute that recent graduates are having difficulty finding employment. In fact, I wrote about that several months ago (see Job Prospects for B-school Grads). My point back then was that although those who graduated without a job (those who were not fortunate enough to lock-in early in the hiring season) were certain to encounter difficulty; in the aggregate, graduates from the Class of 2008 did not have it all that bad.

Most of the problem for recent graduates will come in the form of underemployment versus unemployment. For example, as the article details:

Paul Harrington, an economist at Northeastern University, also found that about 38 percent of young college graduates are “underemployed,” or doing work for which they are overqualified.

“It’s a loss of resources. It’s a social loss. These are bright people who could be engaged in more productive activities but . . . we haven’t figured out how to move them into productive activities,” he said. “That’s the tragedy of a recession.”

That is a prescient comment, and in my opinion “underemployment” will most likely plague 2008 graduates, …for a few years at least.

But again, all things considered, given what the economy has endured, that isn’t the worst of fates. At the least, employers still seemed to be hiring last year.

Employers were expected to increase hiring 8 percent for the class of 2008, sharply below the 17.4 percent surge for the class of 2007.

So if you think the 2007-2008 academic year was bad, just wait until the 2008-2009 year, when the year-over-year hiring rates will likely decrease. In my opinion then, prospects for the Class of 2009 look particularly grim. And unfortunately, we ain’t seen nothin’ yet…

This entry was posted on Monday, August 4th, 2008 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Business Schools, Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.