Before I closed the business for a break last week, in the last three months, I completed my 7th graduate student resume rewrite.
Four clients were from the graduation class of 2018 and three were from the graduation class of 2019. Three had post graduate degrees.
Graduate unemployment is piling up from previous years as students can’t find work.
Here’s a story I wrote about graduate unemployment in Adelaide before Covid-19 hit. It’s much the same story in Wollongong but on a lesser scale.
More than 150,000 Australian university students will graduate this year into the worst jobs market since the Depression.
Job ads are in free fall with Accounting ads down by 44 per cent, legal ads down 43 per cent, IT ads down 38 per cent, and sales ads down by 30 per cent, compared with last year.
Economist Chris Richardson said, “These are the ones who … if we revisit them in 10, 20 or 30 year’s time, over that time, compared to someone arriving in the workforce not in a recession, end up with lower wages. They are the classic scarring victims,” Mr Richardson said.
The impact of ‘scarring’ on graduates – the negative impact of entering the workforce during a major downturn – has been extensively studied in America and Europe.
Graduates who entered the workforce now, would earn on average 30 per cent less over their first five years in the workforce, compared to those who graduated in a normal labour market.
Unemployment jumped to 16.1 per cent for 15- to 24-year-old workers in May (about 30 per cent in real terms), up from 11.3 per cent in March, before dropping to 14.5 per cent in September (about 24 per cent in real terms).
The President of the University of Sydney’s Students’ Representative Council, Liam Donohoe, said there was “widespread fear and uncertainty” among the student cohort preparing to graduate this year.
“Many of the roles they were hoping to take up either don’t exist or are so few and competitive as to make them unrealistic,” he said