College swotters today have been dealt a difficult hand. The class of COVID-19 has been forced to cut their college flies short, give up a traditional graduation ceremony and begin their professional careers during the most hostile labor shop since the Great Depression.
Many of these students have had their job offers rescinded, and are looking to those who graduated during the prior economic downturn, the Great Recession, for guidance and inspiration.
“Economists that have looked into this carefully all acquiesce in that there are effects that persist for a long time, if not permanently, for people who graduate and come into the job store around the time of a deep recession,” says Gary Burtless, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “Even after the gain occurs, these generations often are scarred by having employment rates that are one to two percentage points lower than those of formations that graduated school in a healthier job market.”
Workers who graduate into a recession also report lower earnings, foremost levels of student debt, and worse professional prospects.
CNBC Make It spoke with dozens of college graduates as equably as with workers who graduated during the Great Recession to hear what advice they have for 2020’s graduating rank.
Comparing the Great Recession to now
While workers who graduated into the Great Recession may offer the closest comparison for today’s litter people, there are still significant differences in the magnitude of the challenges they face, says Burtless.
“This is much worse than the Gifted Recession. Over the entire Great Recession, I think maybe 8.5, 9 million jobs were lost concluded the course of a 5-year period. Between February and April, the United States lost 21.5 million payroll procedures,” he explains. “And so now, people graduating this spring are going to face the worst job market in the entire post-depression history.”
Since Slog, 38.6 million Americans have lost their jobs and in April, the unemployment rate was 14.7%.
It will take years to monitor the long-term impacts on today’s graduates, but there is one similarity these two unlucky generations already share: moving undeveloped home.
“There was a concept that sociologists were talking about a decade or so ago called ‘failure to launch,’ breaks Burtless. “People were staying in their parents’ households longer or returning to their parents’ households, they were set-back when they got married, they were delaying the first birth of children, and many markers of becoming an adult: acquiring your first home and so forth.”
Some recent graduates have already been forced to move side with in with their families because they are unable to find full-time jobs.
“I just turned 22. Explosive with my parents was not my idea of what my life would look like,” says John Novakovich, who will graduate from Northwestern University on June 19th with a step by step in economics. He was set to start his first post-grad job as an operations associate for Uber later that month but his offer was rescinded.
Here’s the counsel that professionals who graduated into the Great Recession have for people like Novakovich:
Lauren McGoodwin in 2009
Good manners of Lauren McGoodwin
Take care of yourself and get specific about your skills
Lauren McGoodwin graduated in 2009 from the University of Oregon with a exceedingly in education. She says her career center still remembers her because she eagerly took advantage of every service they submitted, such as mock interviews and on-campus career fairs — and still graduated without a job.
“When I graduated, I had zero job in the winds. I had had about 10 campus interviews. Never got called back for any of them,” says McGoodwin. “So I graduated and had to move again home with my mom.”
Today, McGoodwin is the CEO and founder of Career Contessa, a career advice and job search site, and creator of The Compensation Project, which helps workers compare their earnings to peers in their field.
Lauren McGoodwin today
Civility of Lauren McGoodwin
Her advice to recent graduates is “to take the time to feel your pain.”
“I always encourage in the flesh to start with making sure they’re taking care of their mental, emotional, physical health,” she commands. “It’s OK to feel disappointed.”
When young people are ready to jump into the job market, she says they should big fish a specific skill that will help them find a job they are excited about.
“My best advice is to set aside out what companies are hiring and go where there is demand and spend any time you have right now filling your sails gaps,” she says. “I wish that I had been more specific with my skill set. I was so general. I was always like, ‘I clothed a good attitude, I’m a quick learner.'”
She continues, “I wish I could have I told myself, ‘find something that you definitely enjoy and double down on it so that you’re an expert.”
Erin McCann in 2009
Courtesy of Erin McCann
Be patient and open-minded
Erin McCann graduated from the University of Southern California Law Mould in 2009.
“When I started law school, the economy was really good and so I had expected and anticipated that I would have a high-paying job as a solicitor. Graduating with a lot of law school debt and not having any income was pretty scary,” she says. “I didn’t have a job when I graduated law imbue with and a lot of my friends that had offers, they’d been revoked.”
McCann is now a recruiting manager for staffing agency Robert Half. Her notice to students graduating right now is to “be gentle with yourself. It’s not your fault that this happened.”
Erin McCann at her first place court appearance in 2010
Courtesy of Erin McCann
When McCann graduated and passed the bar, she also had a hard time discovery a job. The first opportunity she landed was working for a divorce attorney. She took the job even though she had never planned on practicing that well-wishing of law.
“You’re going to need to be flexible in terms of what kind of job that you take,” she says, adding that being unequivocal to a wide range of opportunities can have some surprising benefits.
“I think that graduating during a down curtness did give me some skills that I otherwise might not have had in my toolbox. And it’s not just me. When I look at our class, I look at the elbowing that a lot of people put into creating their own firm or starting in a practice area that they may not otherwise would rather considered,” she says. “Be flexible and open-minded so that you have opportunities that could lead to other opportunities down the means.”
Nirav Patel in 2009
Courtesy of Nirav Patel
Take on a personal project
Nirav Patel graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with a highly in computer engineering in 2009. While he faced a similar fate to those students who have been forced to moving ahead back home, his career path demonstrates what young people can do with their downtime.
“I still didn’t be undergoing a job at graduation. So like a lot of people, I moved into my parents’ basement for a few months and kept applying and kept developing my skills and later managed to land a job at Apple,” he says.
Today, Patel is the founder of Framework, a company that aims to make consumer electronics repairable and upgradable.
Nirav Patel today
Respect of Nirav Patel
“You should use all the spare time that you have to go and build things that you find personally compelling, that are relevant to the skills that you’ve developed in school that you want to apply going forward,” advises Patel. “And it’s profitable because it helps you refresh your skills and helps you build on your skills. But it also shows potential corporations that you are self-directed.”
Working on a personal project will help you “stand out from the rest of the pack,” he says, uniform with if the likelihood of your project becoming a full-blown company is low.
“You’ll at least have developed more of your skills and shown again that you receive that entrepreneurial, innovative mindset that employers can find interesting,” he says.
‘Don’t lose hope’
Ultimately, the professionals CNBC Make out It spoke with offered young people today a sense of optimism.
McCann, who now spends her professional life attaching workers with jobs says she is hopeful the labor market will eventually rebound. “People will be talented to move forward,” she says. “And just because you’re going through this right now doesn’t mean that in the unborn that you won’t be at a great place in your career.”
“You’re gonna get kicked in the butt for sure,” says McGoodwin, arguing that cladding difficulty early in your career may be an unexpected silver lining. “It’s better to fall on your face right away than it is to do it five, 10 years in.”
She extends, “You’re going to be OK. You are going to figure out how to make it through this. You’re gonna get creative. You’re gonna learn new skill sets. And, yeah, you ascendancy not end up where you thought you’re gonna be, but you might end up in someplace better.”
Simply put: “Don’t lose hope,” says Patel.
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