On a Tuesday in mid-October, the atrium of Willard-DiLoreto Hall at Central Connecticut State University is full of aspiring accountants. The Career Development Center is hosting a job fair in the bustling academic building for students to jumpstart their career, and the rest of their lives. Representatives from insurance companies like Travelers, plus accounting firms from Harper & Whitfield, Myers and Stauffer, and others stand by tables within the sprawling lobby. A large crowd of students gather around each, hungry to seize any opportunity. They’re given business cards, smiles and handshakes, and pitch spiels from the visiting recruiters.
The two women representing The Hartford, a financial services and insurance group, were very friendly and chatty, willing to tell students anything and everything they could about their firm, as well as their opportunity. What is that opportunity? A cushy, well-paying job? Not quite: interested students are offered a chance to land a highly competitive internship program that could lead to an interview with the company.
Across the lobby stands another infographic for the State Treasurer’s Office, manned by similar representatives, offering similar number-crunching opportunities. But their pitch lauded the benefits of working for the state. They offer quality health insurance and forty-hour work weeks while corporate jobs promise higher pay for much longer hours.
Recent graduates and graduating seniors find themselves vying for jobs in a competitive hiring market that has led to intense competition amongst employers for workers. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that recent graduates, specifically those aged twenty-two to twenty-seven, face an aggressive job market with unemployment rates at around 4.3 percent. This is a low, yet noticeably higher number than last year. Not only that, underemployment is also on the rise, with many graduates finding themselves employed in positions that don’t require a degree.
A recent report from the National Association of Colleges and Employers points out that hiring projections for recent college graduates are considerably lower than last year. Following the pandemic, there were many jobs to fill, particularly those in the leisure and hospitality industries, but that has since leveled off.
Most of these jobs have been recovered. However, there’s been a noticeable decrease in new hires due to a majority of the jobs that were once open now being filled, particularly in the professional and business services. This sector had its slowest hiring rate since 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics report, and has seen a 14.5 percent decrease, a stark contrast to the previous year’s 16.7 percent increase. Lack of demand for employees leads to new college graduates wondering how they’re going to utilize their degree they worked so hard for.
“It’s just hard, especially in Connecticut, there’s not a lot of opportunities in the fields I want to work in.”
In their first and only debate, former President Trump and Vice President Harris clashed over the job market. The Biden/Harris administration has created 16 million jobs during their first forty-three months in office, contrasting the 2.7 million loss under Trump’s time in office. Similarly, while unemployment rates rose under Trump’s administration, they have since decreased under the Biden administration. However, the analysis of job creation under each president must take COVID-19 into account, which caused a dramatic spike in unemployment during Trump’s term and greatly influenced Biden’s narrative of job recovery.
In this new competitive job market, college students can often feel lost. From internships to job fairs to setting up meetings, it can be difficult for a student to work through this process on their own. Fortunately, there are systems in place on college campuses that help with this exact process.
“We help students navigate the world of work. We provide them with tools to assist them with getting gainfully employed at the end of their education journey,” said Valerie Wilson, the Assistant Director at the CCSU Career Development Office (CDO), when we spoke over Microsoft Teams. Since joining CDO two years ago, her focus has been to guide students in resume writing, cover letters, and interview skills. The center supports all students from freshmen to alumni, seeing varying demand all throughout the year, especially from graduating seniors.
Not only does the CDO help each individual student, they also organize dozens of job fairs similar to the accounting event to further connect employers with future employees. Many students take such resources for granted. “I have met with students a year out. I’ve met recently with a student two years out that still has not gotten a professional job. What’s happening? I mean, they have a job working at FedEx, but that’s not what they went to school for, right? So, you know, it’s unfortunate. Like I said, they’ve tried to see if they could do it on their own, and then they’ve realized they need help.”
Wilson finds that many students, especially those in engineering and computer science, struggle to secure jobs if they haven’t utilized the office’s resources before graduation. In fact, there have even been students that return to the center post-graduation, still searching to start a career in their field. “It’s very common,” she notes. “You know, I don’t know if students just feel ‘I got this. I don’t need the career center.’ And then they find themselves graduating in May, and here it is, almost October, and they still have not landed a job.”
One CCSU graduate facing difficulty finding a job in their field is Kathryn Fitzpatrick, a twenty-eight-year-old bank employee who earned her Bachelor’s in English at CCSU, and a Master’s in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama. “I was thinking about teaching at the college level. I had to do that in grad school, like I taught a creative writing workshop, but that was challenging in a different way. But that’s a hard thing to get into, especially with just an MFA. You really need a PhD and I can’t commit to five more years for things to not work out.”
In the summers during graduate school, Fitzpatrick returned to her job at a local bank. “I did data input and stuff like that. Then when I graduated, they said, ‘would you like to stay?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah, sure.’ I didn’t have to interview.” She recently went through five rounds of interviews for a job with an arts organization but couldn’t land it. She’ll continue working at the bank, although it certainly isn’t ideal for her. “I don’t like the corporate sitting-at-a-desk thing. It’s just like, personally, I don’t think it’s sustainable. I know our company is trying to make a move to AI and automated things, so there’s going to come a point probably when what I have to offer is obsolete. So I don’t think those jobs are safe anymore either.” Hardly an unfounded concern considering the shifting and evolving technology industry and how much it impacts jobs all over the country. This prospect of AI taking over jobs is frightening for students who are studying for careers that may not exist in five to ten years.
“There’s plenty of jobs out there for students, adults, and professionals. I think some students just don’t know how to get hired. That’s the dilemma.”
A CCSU graduate in a similar situation is Cecelia Puckhaber, a first-year grad school student pursuing a master’s degree in journalism at Columbia University. Worried for her future, she told me over the phone that graduate school seemed like the best choice to her. “I wanted to have something that made me stand out a little bit so I figured I’d go to journalism school not necessarily to become a journalist or reporter, but so I could build on my multimedia skills.” She finds the experience to be enriching thus far, though she knows positions in her field are scarce, and competition intense.
“We’re all in competition for these jobs because journalism is such a small field, everyone knows each other. The dream for most of us is to be in New York writing for prestigious magazines and stuff. But the reality is there’s five hundred other people applying for the same positions like editorial or junior reporter.” She finds that many job listings she encounters all require her to leave New York and work elsewhere, like Massachusetts or even more rural communities. Puckhaber, like many others, is willing to work hard to get ahead in the pursuit of a good career, even if it means not even having enough free time to hold down a part-time job in the meantime.
As the election approaches, balance within the market and its future is uncertain. What is certain is there will never be a shortage of young workers hungry and in need of good jobs, and in turn, careers. Fitzpatrick, however, remains rightfully concerned about her future. “I really thought I was setting myself up for something good. It’s just hard, especially in Connecticut, there’s not a lot of opportunities in the fields I want to work in. But I don’t want to move to New York.” Although positive about graduate school, Puckhaber echoes that securing a job these days is intensely competitive, and the process has been anything but easy. “It’s better that I have the space [in grad school] to practice being under the same amount of pressure I would in a workplace. It is a lot, it does get very stressful, very intense. There’s definitely been nights where I have cried because I didn’t know how to do something right or if I was going to get my work and my writing in on time.”
Back at the career office, Valerie Wilson is hopeful yet realistic about the future. “There’s plenty of jobs out there for students, adults, and professionals. I think some students just don’t know how to get hired. That’s the dilemma. If they haven’t come to our office to be coached on how to do that, then those are the ones that struggle and those are the ones that we see.”
Jack Grimord is a staff writer for Blue Muse Magazine.
Feature image depicts the accounting fair that took place at CCSU.
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