This year’s college graduates will have to be more creative to land a job they want.
The unemployment rate for college graduates ages 22 to 27 fell to 5.6 percent in 2013 from 6.4 percent at the recession’s peak in 2009. Among 22-year-old degree holders who found jobs in the past three years, more than half were in roles not requiring a college diploma, said John Schmitt, a labor economist for the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington.
Many graduates have traveled nontraditional pathways to find employment in their desired fields. Rory Molleda, 22, started an unpaid internship at Washington’s D.C. United soccer team a week after finishing Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, a year ago.
Forty job applications later, he networked his way to a paid position at another company that wasn’t exactly what he wanted. In January, he landed his “dream job” as a team operations coordinator for D.C. United and said he feels lucky.
“One friend had to move to Idaho after applying to 120 jobs,” said Molleda, who lives with his parents in northern Virginia. The friend found a position as a newspaper reporter and has since moved to Oregon for a different job, Molleda said.
Almost five years into the recovery, the young and educated are settling for jobs they wouldn’t have accepted a decade ago, said Kevin Scott, an Atlanta-based consultant who works with employers.
Buyer’s Market
“While graduates today are more likely to get jobs, they’re unlikely to get a job that they are qualified for or in their area of expertise,” said Scott, whose company is called Addo Institute. “Because it’s such a buyer’s market for employers, they get graduates who will work for less money and for more hours.”
Young people are also getting off to a slower start. They are delaying homeownership and some big-ticket purchases because of student debt and underemployment. Student-loan borrowers retreated from homebuying in 2013 for the second year in a row, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said last month. Young adults without student debt have a net worth that’s seven times higher than those who do, a report from Pew Research showed.
“They’ve done exactly the right thing. They have the right skills,” Schmitt said. “It’s not a slam dunk that you will come out after college in better shape than before you went. On average you do a lot better.”