The Economic Frustration of a Recent College Grad

It has been little over three months since I completed my first bachelors degree in Business with a focus on Human Resource Management...and I am still unemployed. I can think of two things hindering the young college graduate looking for a job right now.


The first being the high number of economic "refugees". I do not remember exactly what term economics uses to describe the people who have been displaced from their jobs and are being forced into lower paying jobs, often in other industries than the ones they normally specialize in. I just know that there are a lot of them, and they form the basis for my competition. Why do I call them refugees? because that is exactly what they are. They have been forced from their "lands" by an economic "famine", and being that they are starving and have nothing to eat they have come to eat my food. Now, whenever I go to apply for an entry-level job I am always told the following: they (the prospective employer) likes me, loves my resume, I am qualified for the job, and I am also competing with about a dozen other people who have already have five to ten years of direct job experience. I then hear the very familiar explanation that they have many interviews to conduct and if I am selected they will call me. I may be educated, I may have a high GPA but when it comes to actrually getting a job I obviously can not compete with someone who has already been doing the job for many years. Perhaps they can make jobs that are lower than entry-level to make room for guys like me in the new economy. If I can't come in through the front door perhaps I can climb in through a window on the other side of the building and sleep in the basement until work starts.

Hilariously enough it is also difficult for me to get a unprofessional job as I have now moved from being under-qualified to over-qualified. Now when I apply for a basic job, say, a front desk clerk at a hotel or a teller at a bank my prospective employer always acts over-suspicious concerning whether or not I will be unhappy with the job and pay and end up picking up a professional job a month later. If the economy was different they would be perfectly right in assuming this, but not in this economy.

My hopes resting on finding a job with the federal government have also been diminished. First, with the announcement by the President that there will be a two year freeze on raises for federal employees (as if they were overpaid to begin with) and now several "non-essential" federal workers may be out of work while Congress fights over the fiscal budget.

I always thought the recession would be over by the time I graduated, but it will probably be one or two more years before we can feel the effects of the recovery phase.