Monday, May 07, 2012

Change: "For Most Graduates, Grueling Job Hunt Awaits"

I'm assuming that any college graduate who complains about the job market must be a racist.

...the class of 2012 faces tougher competition thanks to what Carl Van Horn, director of the Heldrich Center, calls "the recession hangover." Young adults who graduated into the dire labor market of 2008 and 2009 and have been out of work or underemployed since are applying for the same jobs as new grads are. The same goes for earlier grads who were laid off during the recession. Those job candidates, who likely have more experience than new grads, may have an edge, Mr. Van Horn says.

In a better position might be those seniors who took advantage of on-campus recruitment programs. Lauren Martinez, 22 years old, will graduate from Macalester College in St. Paul, Minn., on Saturday with an entry-level consulting job in hand. Competition during recruiting season felt "hard but not terrible," says Ms. Martinez, who received two job offers. Her friends who are graduating without full-time jobs, she adds, have mostly lined up volunteer work, internships and temporary research positions while they continue to search for permanent work.

...a debt burden looms. Two-thirds of students from the class of 2010, the latest figures available, graduated with student loans, with an average tab of $25,250—up 5% from the previous year—according to The Institute for College Access & Success, an independent group that promotes higher education affordability.

Tuition isn't getting any cheaper, so loan figures are expected to be even higher for the current crop of graduates. That means a greater share of those starting salaries will go to repaying lenders, rather than to rent, furnishings or a down-payment fund for a house, delaying financial independence for many young adults.

...even when new graduates do find jobs, their starting salaries tend to be lower than those for their counterparts who graduated a decade earlier, adjusted for inflation. With a lower base pay, research shows they may never catch up.

I have the distinct feeling that the youth vote is going to abandon the Democrat Party in November. For what else can they do but punish the Democrats' intellectual vanguard of Debbie Wasserman-Schlitz, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and the rest of the big government miscreants who are enslaving that generation to economic misery?


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