As the national unemployment rate rose from a nine-year high of
6.1 percent in May to 6.4 percent in June, many UCLA graduates
contributed to the rising percentages.
According to a poll conducted by online employment magazine
CollegeRecruiter.com, 37 percent of 1,000 college students and
recent graduates thought it would take six months or more to find a
job, as 26 percent thought the search would take two to three
months.
Henry Lam, who graduated from UCLA in the spring with a
sociology degree, said a month after graduation, he is still
unemployed.
“I expected the market to be pretty bad right now,”
said Lam, who is still looking for a summer job.
The California unemployment rate for June stayed at 6.7 percent
““ the rate it was in May.
Tom Lieser, senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast, said
he was surprised by the state statistics since unemployment usually
goes up in June, when students and teachers begin summer
vacations.
Though recent graduates often look for employment at job fairs,
Lieser said firms do not actively recruit new workers when the
economy is stalled.
“We’re looking at the bottom of this right now
““ lots of people are displaced, but (there is) not a lot of
new hiring,” he said.
However, Lieser believes California’s economy will
“come back eventually” ““ maybe as soon as during
the school term.
“Next year’s graduates in the Class of 2004 will
have a better chance than the Class of 2003,” Lieser
said.
First-year Leonard Cheung said he hopes the job market will
improve by the time he graduates from UCLA.
“Not too many jobs are available, and it’s a good
time to be in school still,” Cheung said.
Lieser said the San Francisco Bay area, where 10 percent of
workers lost their jobs after the dot-com bust, is the hardest-hit
area for California job seekers.
Susanna Yao, a 2003 graduate with a economics degree, said going
to UCLA has not helped her get hired in San Francisco as much as
she had hoped it would.
“The company looks for personality during the interview
and working experience,” Yao said. “Maybe UCLA or a
top-10 school attracts their attention, but I don’t think
it’s a major attraction.”
Jubi Park, a 2003 graduate with a business economics degree,
said because she has been having trouble getting hired, she decided
to apply to graduate schools to get her master’s degree.
As a Korean citizen, Park said she and her other international
graduate friends have had trouble getting hired because many firms
want to hire people with U.S. citizenship.
Jon Kaplan, associate director of the MBA Career Management
Center, said graduates can use their unemployment time to their
advantage by researching the jobs they are applying for and
questioning whether they will “burn out” in that line
of work.
People have new appreciation for finding jobs, and take extra
care with their applications, Kaplan said.
“I think people have a better understanding of what it
takes to find an opportunity,” he said of new job
seekers.
Yao, who wants a career in financial service, said after
submitting 20 resumes to different companies , she has had roughly
10 interviews in the last two months. However, she has not found an
opening with the salary, benefits and working environment she
dreamed of during school.
Although Lam said he wants a career planning events for a
nonprofit organization, he is willing to settle for a different job
until the right offer comes along.
“There’s a difference between a job and a career,
and I’m looking for both,” he said.