Oregon college graduates struggle to launch careers in grim job market
Published: Saturday, June 12, 2010, 10:00 AM Updated: Friday, June 11, 2010, 7:01 PM
Jackie Mroz, 22, a 2009 honors graduate from the University of Oregon, sets up the hot food line for a luncheon at the Rose Quarter in Portland on her last day of work for Ovations late last month. Mroz has juggled four catering jobs in recent months as she looks for career-level work related to her degrees in international studies and sociology. Last week, she started a 3-month, unpaid internship for a nonprofit agency in Baltimore.More than 11,000 members of the Class of 2010 from Oregon’s seven public universities capped their hard work with commencement ceremonies this week and last.
Now, they move on either to graduate school or to join more than 212,000 other Oregonians looking for work, including untold thousands of last year’s graduates still searching for jobs.
Many from the Class of 2009 are living with their parents and working part-time retail jobs they could have landed without a degree. Others are taking more college classes to put off paying back student loans, which average more than $20,000. Many say they’ve lost self-confidence. Still, none of the 18 students from the Classes of 2009 and 2010 interviewed by The Oregonian expressed regret about going to college.
Job prospects for the Class of 2010, which number about 18,000 students in Oregon when you include those who graduated last fall and winter, are slightly brighter because of a recent increase in employers hiring college graduates, said Edwin W. Koc, research director for the National Association of Colleges and Employers. What’s more, recruiters will focus on the Class of 2010, he said.
“If you come out of the Class of 2009, you are going to be treated as someone who has been in the job market for a year,” he said. Employers want to see some experience, he said.
After a yearlong search, Jackie Mroz, 22, of Oregon City, is about to get some experience, but at a cost.
She put everything she had into her studies at the University of Oregon, graduating in 2009 with degrees in international studies and sociology and a double minor in nonprofit administration and African studies. She studied abroad in Senegal, took challenging courses, earned a 3.8 grade point average and raced through college in three years.
“It has gotten me pretty much nowhere,” she said.
When she graduated, Mroz figured she would quickly land a job with an international nonprofit. After two months, she took on a catering job as she broadened her search. Still living with her