After more than a year of virtual teaching and the loss of an on campus experience held in the Rite of Transition, millions of recent college graduates are in need of a job.
US companies dealing with the worst labor shortage ever need workers. Millions of them.
It seems like a game tailored for a post-COVID-19 rebound, which is seeing a historic surge in demand but continues to be constrained by a staff shortage.
Except that it doesn’t quite work that way.
College students who graduated in May are struggling to find jobs, in part because they are competing with both 2020 graduates who postponed their job search during the pandemic and the millions of Americans who are were laid off in the health crisis, experts say. While employers strive to fill a record number of vacancies, many are low-wage positions that college graduates don’t seek.
“It’s Pretty Scary”: College Grad Splits Job Hunting Amid Pandemic
With hiring freezes and new competition, job hunting for college graduates continues to be complicated during the coronavirus pandemic.
USA TODAY
Other higher-skilled jobs will begging as well, but mostly in certain industries, like technology and healthcare, college and human resources officials say.
“The job market for the 2021 class is improving, but remains unusually difficult,” says Kevin Harrington, CEO of Joblist, which provides online tools to job seekers.
More than half of college and university graduates – 55.6% – described their career prospects as pessimistic, according to a joblist survey of around 1,000 young and future graduates in February and March. The vast majority were looking for entry-level positions, and three in four reported having difficulty finding them.
As a result, 54% opted for more schooling until the labor market improved, while 25% switched industries. Around 80% of those surveyed are expected to graduate this year.
An updated poll of 157 respondents that Joblist conducted last week for USA TODAY showed similar results. Around 47% of those surveyed saw their career prospects as bleak, 31.2% were optimistic. And 72.4% struggled to find the type of entry-level positions that college graduates are looking for.
It’s no wonder college students and new graduates get frustrated. After staying below pre-pandemic levels in May, the number of applicants per entry position rose 44% in June, according to ZipRecruiter, a leading job exchange, and is now 34% above its pre-crisis level.
“Everyone is inundated with applications,” says Julia Pollak, chief economist at ZipRecruiter, an online job marketplace.
McKenzie Galbreath began her job hunt in December and has continued it since graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in Psychology in May. With few job postings in her field, she applied for only five positions and received two interviews while looking for a counseling center at a drug and alcohol rehabilitation center.
“The job search has been tough because I feel like jobs are scarce,” Galbreath, who lives in Tallahassee, Florida, wrote in an email interview. “I noticed that I was also running against graduates from 2020 who were still looking for a job because of COVID. It was a bit daunting to know that so many people were applying for the same positions. “
Of course there are a lot of jobs. According to the latest survey by the National Federation of Independent Business, 48% of small businesses said they would not be able to fill vacancies in May. And in May there were 9.2 million job vacancies across the country, most of them, according to Labor Department figures.
Tasklist surveyMore than half of college and university graduates – 55.6% – described their career prospects as pessimistic. … The vast majority were looking for entry-level positions, and three in four said they couldn’t find them.
Rising COVID vaccinations and the reopening of the economy have boosted consumer demand. However, some workers have chosen to keep the expanded unemployment benefit while others continue to care for children or sick relatives, economists said.
The most serious bottlenecks are in the leisure and hospitality industries, which include restaurants, bars, and hotels, which are now in decline as most states lifted capacity limits and Americans travel again. College graduates generally don’t seek server or receptionist jobs, but some aspire to leadership positions in those sectors, says Lakeisha Mathews, director of the Career and Internship Center at the University of Baltimore and future president of the National Career Development Association.
With many laid-off workers still being sidelined, graduates should have a head start in competing for these jobs, she says. But they may want to act quickly. About half of the states have already canceled the $ 300 federal unemployment benefit along with other pandemic-related aid. By September this support will cease across the country and most schools will reopen, forcing former managers of restaurants, hotels, theme parks and other entertainment establishments to start looking for a job again.
“There are still a lot of people out of work and it will be competitive very soon,” said Andrew Challenger, senior vice president at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement company.
There are many other jobs available for college graduates. The number of job vacancies in professional and corporate services hit a record 1.5 million in April, up from 1.3 million before the pandemic. But positions like this target highly skilled areas like information technology, engineering, and healthcare, say Mathews, Pollak, and Joshua Kahn, assistant director of research and public policy for the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).
In industries like marketing, public relations, and social affairs, many companies cut entry-level jobs during the crisis and were slow to bring them back, says Pollak.
“Everyone has got used to doing without their people,” she says. “Companies have become more efficient”
In March employers forecast 7.2% more new college graduates from the 2021 class than from the 2020 class, but this would still remain below pre-pandemic levels, according to NACE and Kahn.
At the same time, 2021 college graduates are vying for positions with their 2020 predecessors, many of whom postponed their job searches during the pandemic, as well as people laid off amid the pandemic, say Kahn and Challenger. Forty-five percent of 2020 graduates were still looking for work as of March 2021, according to a survey by job site Monster.com earlier this month.
And although the US regained 15.6 million of the 22.4 million jobs lost in the early days of the pandemic, around 6.8 million Americans are still unemployed due to the crisis, although some have retired. Some of the unemployed still have a few years of experience in the type of entry-level positions that graduates seek.,
Andrew Challenger, Challenger, Gray & ChristmasThere are still many unemployed and it will be competitive really soon.
Graduates traditionally have one big advantage over older workers: they usually don’t have families and some are willing to move to other regions of the country for a job. That head start, however, has been weakened somewhat by the pandemic-sparked trend towards remote working, with many companies willing to hire candidates who can work from their current homes across the country, Challenger says.
Faced with fierce competition, Galbraith, the University of Florida graduate seeking a counseling job, has switched her strategy from searching online postings to “networking and building relationships with people”.
“It helped me discover new opportunities that I didn’t know about, and I also have more knowledge of the type of position I want to pursue,” she says.
Still, she’s thinking about going back to school and doing a Masters to improve her chances and improve her starting salary.
“That’s definitely something I’m considering,” she says.
Alexia Brown, another 2021 University of Florida graduate majoring in psychology, has been seeking a job as a laboratory assistant at a university to help her decide whether to research, become a psychotherapist, or teach. However, she says there are few entry-level positions as the pandemic has resulted in a decline in federal funding.
It also competes with unemployed academic staff who have two or three years of professional experience.
“It’s very difficult to know what I want to do, see the possibilities, and just can’t get a foot in the door,” says Brown. “It’s a little frustrating.”
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Released 04:11 UTC July 8, 2021
Updated July 8, 2021 at 04:14 UTC
source https://collegeeducationnewsllc.com/jobs-market-for-college-graduates-is-tough-despite-labor-shortages/
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