Seniors preparing to graduate this spring are facing good news.Employers will significantly increase the number of college graduates they hire this year, according to a National Association of Colleges and Employers survey.

The survey states a 10.2 percent increase in 2012 hiring above a previous estimate of 9.5 percent.

The unemployment rate for those with a bachelor’s degree or higher is 4.2 percent, which is about half of the nation’s unemployment rate of 8.3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Donald Dutkowsky, an economics professor at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University, said the current unemployment rate for college graduates, although lower than the national average, is higher than usual. He said the unemployment rate for college graduates is typically about 2 percent.

‘The unemployment rate for college graduates is much lower than any of the comparison groups: high school dropouts, high school graduates, and even some college and associate degrees,’ Dutkowsky said.

Dutkowsky said the unemployment rate for college graduates is likely dropping because college graduates possess certain skills desirable to many companies.

The current labor force has leveled off, Dutkowsky said, and companies are now looking to new entries, especially graduating college students, to balance the equation.

‘The record of employment, the record of hiring in the work place, is very skewed toward college graduates,’ Dutkowsky said. He said students just out of college often possess the skills that make employees marketable, such as reading, writing, researching and other specialized skills that come along with certain majors.

Jordan Clifford, a senior magazine journalism major, said she has been networking and reaching out to contacts in the industry rather than actively job-hunting because, in the magazine industry, employers typically ask that you be ready to start the job in two to three weeks. However, Clifford said she feels there are more available jobs in the magazine industry, such as editorial assistant positions.

Clifford also said she felt the availability of jobs was dependent on the industry. She said she had friends in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management studying finance and entrepreneurship and emerging enterprises that secured jobs a semester before even graduating.

Although the survey done by the National Association of Colleges and Employers indicates improvement in the economy, Dutkowsky said the national unemployment rate must fall to approximately 5.5 percent for the economy to be considered healthy.

‘It’s good news. It’s reflective of an improving economy, but that’s a slowly improving economy,’ he said. ‘It has been one that has penalized younger people in terms of getting the types of career beginnings that they normally got.’

Though there are indicators of improvement like this anticipated rise in hiring of recent college graduates, Dutkowsky stressed that the economy is on the rise from a ‘pretty low vantage point,’ and there is still much room for improvement.

cffabris@syr.edu  

Published on April 3, 2012 at 12:00 pm

Contact Casey: cffabris@syr.edu | @caseyfabris