The general uncertainty surrounding the current national unemployment rate has college seniors concerned with life after graduation.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. unemployment rate skyrocketed from 5.9 percent in February 2008 to 8.1 percent in February.
These statistics suggest no fields of work are recession-free, giving upcoming college graduates one more item of concern.
Scott Maynard, Mississippi State University Career Center director, said the economy might not be directly linked to an increase in graduate school interest and also gave reason to why education and health care are safer areas.
“I don’t know if there’s anything that’s recession free,” he said. “But next week, we’ve got 59 school systems coming on campus to interview education majors [because] it doesn’t matter what the economy does, our schools are still going to operate.”
Many students are choosing graduate programs to wait out the recession.
“Whenever the economy turns down, you’ll see an increase in grad school enrollment,” Maynard said. “I think it’s more of a perception in students’ minds; I’m not sure if it’s an indirect or a direct effect from the economy.”
BLS announced in 1983 unemployment in the U.S. was averaged at 9.6 percent.
Libba Andrews, who graduated from MSU in 1983, said she did not experience the chaos surrounding the unemployment situation as college graduates are now.
“I was getting married in September after graduation, and I was actually more worried on that than on finding a job,” she said.
Andrews graduated with a degree in public relations and now works for the Alumni Association. She said she agrees with the idea that the media has a large part in why unemployment is stressed more now than in 1983.
But Maynard said there are opportunities out there; students simply must be proactive.
“Treat the job search with as much time and passion as you do the hardest class you ever took at Mississippi State,” Maynard said. “Signing that position that’s out there right now that’s a bridge position to get you to what you really want to do [is] much better than sitting at home doing nothing.”
With Mississippi’s unemployment rate at a whopping 9.1 percent, MSU graduates planning to work in the state are having problems.
For senior industrial engineering major Royce Goodwin, interviews did not return any instantaneous job offers.
“I interviewed with four different companies in the past six months, and they were all in hiring freezes, resulting in me not getting any of the jobs,” Goodwin said.
The term hiring freezes, commonly used during economic recession, means the said company is not hiring and is preventing future lay offs. Hiring freezes also encourage students to enroll in graduate programs because they remind them how bad the job market is.
“I am going to grad school for an MBA in project management,” Goodwin said. “The economy definitely had an influence on my choosing grad school. I don’t have a job after graduation, and I’d much rather go to grad school than have a job [not in engineering].”
While grad school does not secure a job after it’s been completed, it does make the hiring process more competitive.
“There are opportunities out there, it just takes a little more effort to flush those opportunities out,” he said. “It’s really all about networking. You have to work harder and harder to find those jobs.”