Reporting Heather Brown (WCCO) While Minnesota's unemployment rate is up slightly over last year, career service directors across Minnesota colleges said the job market for recent grads is healthy.
According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) job outlook, employers will hire 8 percent more graduates this year compared to last year. The grads who land the jobs will be paid 5.3 percent more than last year's graduating class.
Those numbers were revised downward from the fall of 2007, when employers told the NACE they were planning to hire 16 percent more graduates than last year.
"Generally speaking, the class of 2008 is not entering a poor job market," said NACE in a news release.
Career service directors surveyed at colleges and universities across Minneapolis and St. Paul agreed. Many said on-campus recruiting at job fairs is up from last year.
"Every student's concerned until their job offer comes in the mail. That's something that we've always seen," said Bill Woodson, assistant dean for University of St. Thomas MBA programs. "We're seeing placements rates that are right with last year's experience."
University of St. Thomas tracks its student's employment after college. Its most recent survey found 85 percent of the undergraduate class of 2007 was employed full-time, part-time, volunteer or in the military service.
Many graduating students have already found jobs. Career service directors said it's important to use the campus network and actively pursue employers. Many employers are looking to eventually replace baby-boomers set to retire over the next few years with these recent graduates. The grads have more technology experience and demand lower salaries.
University of Minnesota senior Sarah Chermok will work at a group home for adults with disabilities. She'd been working there part-time throughout college.
Another senior, Isaac Bandy, has accepted a job as a mechanical engineer with a company where he's interned for two years.
"Some of my friends have jobs. Some of them are struggling to get interviews," Bandy said.
U of M senior Josh Wadinsky said he'll start looking after he finishes his honors thesis. He'd like to work at a non-profit organization on the East Coast and said he doesn't expect to run into problems.
"It's seems like there's a lot of possibilities out there. I just have to find the field I'm interested in," he said.
Sara Nagel Newberg, Director of the Career Center for the St. Paul campus of the University of Minnesota, said some fields have been hit hard. She's seen slowdowns in housing and retail for new grad jobs, but jumps in the environmental field.
Newberg said even though students are doing well now, she's "waiting for the other shoe to drop."
Many have predicted that next year's job market for recent grads could be bad if the economy continues its slump.
It's too early to tell how wages may be affected in the long-term. A Stanford University professor used information from the Stanford MBA classes of 1960 through 1997 to analyze salaries with the health of the market. He found grads in bull markets can make $1.5 to $5 million more in their lifetime than grads in tough markets. He found the primary reason was more grads went into investment banking in bull markets.
