It can be unnerving to get your college degree in the middle of a recession. Early indications this year were that corporations were especially eager to hire college graduates, but at salaries that averaged 20 percent lower than last year. New statistics indicate that salary offers for new college graduate have not actually fallen, on average, from last year. It’s probably a sign that employers got few takers for the lowball salary offers they started with, and that job-seekers who held out for more got the salaries that they would have merited last year.
The number of new college graduates being hired is also projected to be up from last year, in spite of an economy that has been shedding 50,000 jobs per month. Colleges say it is their older graduates who are having trouble finding jobs, not the newest graduates. Employers are cutting costs by hiring younger workers and paying them less than they would pay experienced workers.
