Job prospects for the next wave of college graduates are … well, it depends on the survey.
There’s the annual “Recruiting Trends” report out of Michigan State, which forecasts that overall hiring, for all degrees, will go up 4 percent in 2012, and that bachelor’s degree hiring will increase 7 percent.
There’s the annual “Job Outlook” from the National Association of Colleges and Employers, which says employers plan to hire 9.5 percent more college graduates in 2011-12 than they did in 2010-11. (That’s about half what they predicted a year ago, so it’s not as rosy as it looks. “Employers proceed with caution for the Class of 2012,” reads the NACE headline.
There’s a survey by CareerBuilder and CareerRookie that found 54 percent of employers planning to hire 2012 graduates, up 8 percent from the year before and 9 percent from the year before that. “Positive hiring outlook for the class of 2012,” reads the CareerBuilder headline.
Notice that these findings come in the form of year-to-year comparisons. If the employment numbers for college grads are low to begin with, modest increases aren’t much comfort.
This brings us to the recent AP survey, which looks at the overall employment picture and finds that about 53 percent of bachelor’s degree holders under age 25 were unemployed or underemployed, and that median wages for those who were employed had fallen below those of 2000.
OK, let’s consider Vermont, which has a high quotient of out-of-state college students. Our political and business leaders are forever wishing that these students will stick around after they graduate to stoke the economic engine of a fearfully graying state. Fine, what will they do if they stay here?
Consider the Vermont Labor Department’s forecast of job openings (for Occupational Projections 2010-2012, click here). Just four of the Top 20 occupations with the most openings seem to require a postsecondary degree: registered nurse (No. 7); first-line supervisors/managers of retail sales workers (No. 9); accountants and auditors (No. 16); and teacher assistants (No. 20).
Here are the six occupations forecast to have the most openings in Vermont this year: cashiers, retail salespersons, waiters/waitresses, personal and home care aides, counter attendants, customer service representatives.
Well then, what about Vermont’s fastest growing occupations? Sure enough, most of them require college degrees. The trouble is, they have far fewer openings than the ones we just listed. And the the No. 3 and No. 5 fastest growing occupations — personal and home care aides, and home health aides — will have more openings between them (496) than the all the fastest growing STEM occupations in the top 50 combined.
