Students preparing to graduate from all departments are inevitably concerned about finding a job in the not-so-distant future.
The job market is constricting like an anaconda around the body of its unsuspecting prey — you can try to peel its powerful, scaly flesh off the paralyzed creature but its death grip is too strong.
Employers added just 51,000 jobs in September, the fewest in almost a year, MSNBC reported.
According to a monthly report compiled by employment consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, the slowdown in new jobs has been accompanied by a pickup in announced layoffs. The report said the number of planned layoffs was increased 54 percent in September and reached the 100,000 mark for the first time since January.
Wow. It is as bad as last January. What a catastrophe!
I don’t know how we survived last January to begin with — for a couple weeks there it was like living in a third-world country.
With the job market in such a horrifying state, we are all going to have to start selling our organs on eBay just to make rent. And to think, when I changed my major to English, I was sure I was sacrificing the juicy paychecks that a finance degree could provide.
Now it doesn’t matter what you majored in, the values of all bachelor’s degrees have been reduced to a flimsy piece of paper. We are all on equal footing.
So I, the English major, get the last laugh.
I was already prepared for the minimalist lifestyle of a struggling writer: Dumpster-diving for meals, showering in other people’s lawn sprinklers, using a handful of sticks to comb my hair, etc.
The only downside is now I will have to fight off the finance majors for first pick of the dumpster.
The U.S. unemployment rate is a whole 4.6 percent. I know that figure may shock and appall you. It may make you find religion so you can pray to God for a job after graduation. And truthfully, it should scare you — statistically, that’s like having nearly all of the nation’s natural redheads be unemployed.
Sadly, another detrimental factor in finding a job right out of school — most employers require an applicant to have significant work experience — will add insult to outgoing college students’ injury as they seek out work. It’s a Catch-22 — they require a degree, which means you have to spend all of your young adult life in school, but then they turn around and expect you to have three-plus years work experience in a related field.
How is a person supposed to get work experience if they can’t get a job?
It is clear that we are all doomed. So my advice to all is this: Move back in with your parents for the next 20 to 30 years until the job market is thriving again.
Then, the unemployment rate will only be a healthy 4.5 percent. Problem solved.
Melissa plans to marry rich once she gets sick of dumpster diving. If you are wealthy and would like to woo her, please send proposals to
melissa.mapes@asu.edu.
