1 in 2 New College Graduates are Jobless or Underemployed

As college seniors come into spring, many of us are preparing to graduate. As we do, we will be facing a weak labor market that could make finding a job of our dreams really difficult. About 1.5 million or 53.6% of graduates under the age of 25 were jobless or underemployed in 2011. This was the highest rate in more than a decade. Going back to the year 2000, this rate was just 41%.

Many college graduates are increasingly turning to lower-wage jobs such as waitering, bar-tending, retail; jobs that do not utilize the investment of four years or more of higher education. This is confounded by higher tuition and the increasing levels of student loans. According to Harvard economist Richard Freeman, student loan debt has surpassed $1 trillion.

While their knowledge and abilities are important to our society, demand for the arts and humanities have simply not been producing any form of market for jobs. This is contrasted with high demand from employers in science, education, and health care. Even within those categories, specific positions and majors vary on demand.

A lot of the decrease in demand for college graduates is attributed to technological changes and the macro economic downturn of recent years. By region, the hardest areas to find jobs were in Mountain West, where about 3 in 5 graduates are underemployed or jobless. Following in their footsteps were Southern states Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee, along with Pacific region states Alaska, California, Hawaii, Oregon, and Washington. On the opposite end, Texas demonstrated strong higher skilled jobs among graduates attributed to clusters in high tech industries.

The middle level workers seem to be the worse hit, with job gains coming from top and bottom of the wage scale. Up to 95% of positions lost during the economic recovery occurred in middle-income occupations.

This poses a serious problem as college graduates are fresh out of college, with their skills at hand only to be faced with the burden of losing that competitive edge to future generations of college graduates. It's an affect that hampers the economy today and in the near future.

It is said the most successful people find what they are good at, and stick with that career path through the thick and thin, but at this point, just how thin can we go before we starve?

Source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/1-2-graduates-jobless-underemployed-140300522.html