the signs,” he said. “I mean, I worked in
risk management.” He’s headed to grad
school next year.
In the middle of last summer, Kasey
Munson ’09 said she just wanted to enjoy
her “funemployment” for a while. With a
degree in international studies and a
French minor, Munson has just finished a
seasonal job at Yellowstone National Park,
and now she’s thinking about working at a
ski resort through the winter.
Keep digging in on what you studied
for. Shift gears and find a way to bide the
time until things get better. Funemployment. Graduate study.
Graduating into the most dismal job
market in two decades, many in the class of
2009 have no workplaces in which to hang
their diplomas.
In midsummer, there were three times
as many unemployed new graduates as
there had been at the same time the previous year, according to an ongoing survey
by University Career Services. By October,
the office’s survey numbers indicated that
53 percent of those in the class of 2009
were employed full time and that 31 percent of ’09 grads were moving on to postgraduate education — about 12 percent
were still seeking employment. In fall 2008,
64 percent of that year’s new graduates had
jobs, 26 percent were headed to grad
school, 4 percent were working part time
and 4 percent were still seeking employment.
The story has been well-documented
nationally: This year’s college graduates face
fewer job prospects and lower wages than
preceding classes. Across the country, new
graduates are desperately scanning employment Web sites, working part time or in
unpaid internships, or abandoning career
goals in struggling industries to take jobs in
other fields. According to the 2009 Student
Survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers, just under 20 percent
of the American college seniors who were
applying for jobs before graduation actually
PHOTOS BY DAN SEARS ’ 74
‘I’ve always wanted to travel, and I think I would have. But the recession made my decision to go now and to go for a year so much easier.’ Lillie Elliot ’09
had one. By comparison, in the 2008
national survey, 26 percent of job-seeking
seniors had jobs by graduation; in 2007, 51
percent had jobs.
“I thought I would have a job [earlier],
obviously,” said Stenstrom, who graduated
with a business major and a minor in
mathematical decision sciences and worked
three internships as an undergraduate. In
early fall, he was hired as an investment
analyst in Raleigh. That job was the result
of Stenstrom applying for some 50 jobs
since May; throughout the summer, he had
interviews with only two employers, and
neither of those panned out.
This year, at least, a good chunk of the
so-called Millennial Generation — they of
the iPods and helicopter parents and
boundless opportunities — have been confronted with shut doors, dead ends and a
growing sense of uncertainty when it
comes to careers. Some graduates, rightly
or wrongly, have been expressing the same
sentiments you see in tourist shops: “I spent
