HIRING MARKET LOOKS ROSIER

The reality for recent graduates is looking rosier.

According to a survey conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers this spring, employers are planning to hire 19.3 percent more new college graduates than they did last year. In St. Lawrence County, SUNY Canton, SUNY Potsdam, St. Lawrence University in Canton and Clarkson University in Potsdam all reported unofficial increases in hiring for the class of 2011.

"Our statistics aren't necessarily in just yet, but we're optimistic because we've been following along with some of the research that's been coming out of New York State's regional Bureau of Labor Statistics, and all of our projections seem to mirror the national data," said David F. Norenberg, SUNY Canton's director of career services. "Along with the national data and the things you hear on the news, we've been watching more optimistic discussions among employers."

Because none of the four colleges collect hard data about students' job placement for several months to a year after graduation, ideas about how the class of 2011 will fare in the job market are preliminary. Still, career services and planning directors at all four colleges said they had seen job offerings increase for recent graduates, even if only marginally.

"I think that anecdotally we feel like more of our students had offers at commencement," said Carol L. G. Bate, St. Lawrence's assistant dean of student life and director of career services. "The higher job market's a little more hospitable this year."

Despite the increase in job offers, though, students are still facing higher national unemployment rates than they were before the recession. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the jobless rate for 20- to 24-year-old college graduates was 7.1 percent in April 2010 and 6.4 percent in April 2011 compared with 3.5 percent in April 2007.

Moreover, recent graduates who have found jobs are not necessarily working in the fields in which they received their degrees. A Rutgers University survey titled "Unfulfilled Expectations: Recent College Graduates Struggle in a Troubled Economy" noted that 30 percent of newly employed students said their jobs were largely unrelated to their undergraduate degrees, 27 percent said their first job was "just a job to get you by" and 40 percent said their first jobs didn't require a college degree at all.

The four colleges' career services and planning directors had differing opinions as to which undergraduate majors offered the most recession-proof job opportunities, but healthcare, engineering, computer science and finance were all mentioned as strong fields. Karen L. Ham, SUNY Potsdam's director of career planning, noted that recent graduates may need to broaden their expectations and accept less-than-perfect jobs while they wait for that ideal position to open up.

"I think students are going to have to be very proactive and flexible," she said. "It's still a buyer's market where employers can be very selective, and I think sometimes there's more criteria added than in the past."

Feeling the crunch of joblessness is Massena's Carolee A. Stearns, who recently received a bachelor's degree in sociology from SUNY Potsdam. She was still searching for a job at the time of her graduation in May and said that the market was proving challenging for her and many of her classmates.

"I would say it's weak, especially in my major," she said. "It is discouraging. You spend a lot of money to go to school and you expect to find a slightly higher paying job than you would with just a high school degree. It definitely doesn't come easy."

Recent graduate Nathan A. Cote, who received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Clarkson University and recently accepted a job with Liverpool-based TRC Engineers, Inc., said that the state of the job market was all relative to students' majors.

"It really depends on your field of study. Personally I think there's a lot of opportunities for a lot of engineering and science-based majors," he said. "I ended up finding a job pretty quick — I got an offer for a job in December. It's definitely getting better than it was, but it's still kind of getting out of a bad time."