In his job search, North Jersey resident and recent college graduate Colin Logsdon sometimes sends out as many as 100 applications a week.
Logsdon, from Chatham, had done everything right up to that point. He went to Iona College and studied finance. He was a Division 1 athlete. And he went to New York University to continue his education, this time on a scholarship.
“I was very disappointed, I hardly ever heard back from anyone, even if I did get a rejection letter, it would take weeks,” she said in a recent interview.
For now, he plans to continue his search for research assistant positions, particularly in the health field, attend job search trainings, and continue his clinical trial research as a volunteer.
Logsdon is not alone.
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According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, with more than 3 million New Jerseyans holding college degrees, the prospects for new graduates finding jobs have become increasingly difficult.
After a burst of job growth in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic (remember the Great Resignation?), hiring has slowed, especially in white-collar jobs, said James Hughes, an economist and professor of urban planning at Rutgers University.
After COVID-19, “it was a fantastic time to be a college graduate because companies were trying to increase staff,” Hughes said. “But now they’re full.”
Jobs have been filled in banking, finance and marketing.
Jobs have been filled in software development, banking, finance and marketing, said Nick Fuentes, director of economic research for North America at Indeed Hiring Lab.
Since January 2021, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has been higher than the unemployment rate for the general population, according to the New York Federal ReserveBetween 1990 and 2013, the opposite occurred.
What this means is that recent college graduates (those between the ages of 22 and 27) are more likely than the general population to be out of work.
in a survey this spring Among 226 employers across a range of industries, companies said they planned to hire nearly 6% fewer college graduates than the previous year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
And job openings in professional positions for recent graduates have declined this year compared with February 2022, at the peak of the Great Resignation, according to federal data.
Hiring was down 6.9% year-over-year in the New York City metropolitan area, which includes North Jersey, according to the professional social networking site LinkedIn.
Inflation and budget constraints slow hiring
“Many businesses are dealing with higher operating costs due to inflation and budget constraints that make them cautious about hiring more staff,” said Colleen Georges, a career coach in Piscataway.
From March 2022 through July 2023, the Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate from near zero to a range of 5% to 5.25% (a 23-year high) in an effort to tame a pandemic-induced surge in inflation.
Recent reports underline that inflation fell sharply in May, with a key indicator closely monitored by the Fed: 2.6%. This figure is higher than the Fed’s 2% target, but the lowest since March 2021 and lower than the peak of 5.6% reached in mid-2022.
But Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has maintained a cautious stance on rate cuts since inflation unexpectedly picked up in the first quarter after slowing significantly last year.
“Interest rates are hurting business expansion,” said Vincent Vicari, regional director of the Bergen County Small Business Development Center.
“Companies are adopting restrictive measures because they cannot borrow money to expand,” Vicari said. “That limits the capacity for job creation.”
Recent graduates can consider research and internships as “work experience”
How do recent graduates find jobs when companies say they only want to hire people with experience?
“Basically, a lot of these positions ask for significant work experience, three to five years, and they label those applications as entry-level,” said Logsdon, 23, of Chatham.
One way to get a head start is to take into account your experience in and out of the classroom when considering those first few years of experience, said Mary Alice Barrows, director of career services at William Paterson University in Wayne.
Everything from research positions to student clubs and organizations to internships count toward those years of experience, she said.
“It’s about what you do in the classroom and outside of the classroom during your time at university,” Barrows added.
Some students have been lucky.
Tiffany Tshimanga is a 2024 Willian Paterson Nursing graduate working as a nurse at Hackensack Meridian Health.
During college, she worked as a patient care technician in the same healthcare network, essentially as a nursing assistant, and learned things like basic patient-nurse etiquette.
“I just applied to the same place I was already working, within the same network,” she said. “I guess you could say I was lucky because I was able to get that experience before I started working.”
Overqualified and underemployed
He New York Federal Reserve A study by the New York Federal Reserve found that as of March of this year, more than 40% of recent college graduates were “underemployed”—working in jobs that did not require a college degree. The New York Fed also notes that the unemployment rate for “young workers” without a college degree (which is a much more comparable group to recent college graduates) is consistently much higher than that for recent graduates.
Jonathan Klan, a recent Southern New Hampshire University graduate who lives across the New Jersey border in Rockland County, said he found work in retail just to make ends meet during his career search.
After studying business administration and having completed a summer internship, he estimates that he has applied for more than 1,000 jobs in sectors such as hospitality, business, accounting and medicine, without success.
The Strada Institute for the Future of Work and the Burning Glass Institute, in a March ReportThey found that 52% of college graduates were “underemployed” one year after graduation, while 45% were underemployed even a decade after college.
Losing personal and professional growth due to COVID
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended what was supposed to be a period of personal and professional growth for many college students, experts say.
Many of this year’s graduates began their college experience on Zoom instead of in dorms and lecture halls.
College graduates “are very uncomfortable with the social skills required for an interview, like talking to someone, getting them on the phone, looking them in the eye,” said Beth Hendler-Grunt, a career coach and president of Next Great Step, a career counseling center based in Livingston.
“It’s just things they haven’t had the opportunity to practice as much,” he said, pointing to a litany of college experiences students missed out on that would help prepare them for a career.
New Jersey college campuses were forced to close and shift to virtual learning during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020, and then operated with intense public health measures, including mask-wearing and social distancing.
The National Institute of Health, in a Document 2022detailed a high rate of mental health issues among college students, including anxiety, depression and learning difficulties due to the pandemic.
The Shotgun Approach
Cynthia Michalewski, senior assistant director of the career center at Ramapo College in Mahwah, warned against what amounted to a shotgun approach — sending out hundreds or thousands of job applications in the hope that something will stick.
She said networking is key. “You have to talk to people who are in those positions or at those companies that you want to work for,” she said. “It’s all about who knows you.”
“People say they have difficulties,” Michalewski said. “How are they applying for the scholarship? What methodology are they using? Is it just a passive method? To what extent is the active method used?”
Job search website Indeed.com This shotgun approach was also discouraged.
“When you apply for a multitude of jobs, it’s easy to send the same resume and cover letter to each one,” the company wrote.
“Make your resume and cover letter stand out to hiring managers by tailoring them not only to the industry you work in, but also to the job position and company.”
Does having a college degree still matter?
Logsdon is not ruled out.
His hope is that through his volunteer research work and collaboration with a career counselor, something will come of it. And his parents have supported him every step of the way.
“Twenty years ago, saying you lived with your parents might have been frowned upon,” he said.
He Social Security Administration It is estimated that with a bachelor’s degree you can earn at least $600,000 more over a lifetime than without one.
In Barrows’ view, yes: a college degree makes a difference.
“The bachelor’s degree is a foundation,” he said. “It’s a combination of the academic aspect and the extracurricular aspect that you’ll get from it.”
Daniel Munoz covers business, consumer affairs, labor and the economy for NorthJersey.com and The Record.
Email: munozd@northjersey.com; Twitter:@danielmunoz100 and Facebook
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