Dismal job market for graduating U.S. students

By Erin Kutz
BOSTON (Reuters) - Facing the worst job market in a generation, students graduating from America's universities say they are willing to do just about anything for work.
Some are taking unpaid internships, publishing blogs to document their troubles, applying to nonprofit organizations instead of more lucrative private-sector jobs or even moving back with their parents.
Mike Rubino, who studied public relations at Boston University, had never considered a career as a teacher. But as the end of his final year of college neared with the U.S. economy in a tailspin, he had a change of heart.
After watching his classmates scramble for the same limited pool of jobs, Rubino sent his resume to Teach for America, a nonprofit AmeriCorps program that enlists graduates to teach in low-income rural and urban public schools for two years.
He got the job a month before graduation.
"I realized how lucky I was that I had a guaranteed two-year salary," he said.
Only 43 percent of employers in a survey by online job website CareerBuilder.com intended to hire new college graduates this year, down from 56 percent in 2008 and 79 percent in 2007. The site surveyed about 2,500 hiring managers and human resource officials from February 20 to March 11.
The survey also showed that one in five employers plan to reduce starting salaries for college graduates from what they were last year.
"A lot of students think, 'I may not get the job I want right now so I might as well do this and put that other job on hold,'" said Dick Leger, director of Boston University's career services office.
Rubino is not alone. More than 35,000 people applied to Teach for America jobs this year, up 42 percent from last year, said Teach for America spokeswoman Kerci Marcello Stroud. Even graduates from America's most elite schools applied.
Eleven percent of all seniors at Ivy League schools such as Harvard University and Yale applied to the program.
Nationally, less than 20 percent of graduating college seniors who applied for a job this year have one, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers. That's down more than 30 percent from two years ago when more than half of those who applied for a job had one by the time of graduation.
'NOT GOING TO LAND MY DREAM JOB'
University of Missouri journalism graduate Carrie Bien has taken an innovative approach to youthful joblessness by documenting the trials of finding work on a blog, "The Final 30 days," that illustrates a big shift in expectations among many graduating American students.
"I have now come to terms with the fact that right out of college, no matter how hard I worked in undergrad, I am not going to land my dream job," she wrote in one entry. Continued...
Source: Reuters