In summer 2009, media arts and technology and English senior Audrye Tucker began the hunt for a job. And it only took her 200 job applications to find one.
“I remember my aunt saying that it’s really, really bad out there right now,” Tucker said. “She said most of the college students were (applying for) the jobs at fast-food restaurants, but the big managers that got fired are getting hired at fast-food restaurants. Why would they hire a college student?”
Now, with a May graduation looming, Tucker plans to complete a summer internship before entering into graduate school. She said she hopes to see the economy turn around before she completes her master’s — and recent statistics show it might. Although the economy in Michigan still might be feeling the effects of the recession, employers slowly are beginning to hire again, said Kelley Bishop, executive director of MSU’s Career Services Network.
“We’re all kind of quietly optimistic,” Bishop said. “Our trends are going along with a bit of a downturn in unemployment claims. We’re seeing hiring start again.”
Holding steady
A quick glance at Michigan’s unemployment numbers doesn’t seem to indicate the economy is improving.
Michigan’s unemployment rate decreased by .7 percent in December 2010. However, the decrease is due in part to unemployed individuals who have stopped looking for work. The work force in Michigan declined by 37,000 in December 2010, partially because of the state’s decline in population. While Michigan’s unemployment rate fell 2.8 percent from December 2009 to December 2010, Michigan’s workforce declined by 73,000 in 2010, according to the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth.
Bruce Weaver, an economic analyst with the department, said while employment remained “flat” in 2010, that in itself is improvement from the large number of layoffs and job loss in 2009.
“We were not recording any more large amount of layoffs on a monthly basis,” Weaver said. “The job market stabilized, but it didn’t turn around”
In East Lansing, the story is similar. Between November 2007 and 2009, 1,766 jobs were lost. In 2010, employment only rose by 74 jobs. East Lansing’s Planning and Community Development Director Tim Dempsey said the normal job increase per year before the recession was about 100 to 200 jobs, but in the context of the recession, any job additions are important.
“The modest increase is in line with what we’re seeing as a slow recovery,” Dempsey said. “We’re starting to see the unemployment rate peak.”
Going up
At least 100 students lined and hallways and flooded the lobby of Kellogg Center on Jan. 20 in anticipation for the start of the MSU Diversity Career Fair. One of the 116 businesses waiting for students inside the fair was Advanced Technology Services Inc., a company which performs preventative maintenance on factories to help them function more efficiently. At times in 2009, the company had about 20 open positions, said Julie Earnest, purchasing and inventory manager with Advanced Technology Services Inc. This year, it has 125 positions and is looking for college students.
“The challenge we have is finding skilled labor to fill the open positions that we have,” Earnest said.
The story was the same was true at Aerotek’s table where account manager and MSU alumnus Steve Gerstenberger said the company had rebounded from a near hiring freeze in 2008 and was looking for 50-60 jobs in Michigan alone.
Even the state of the career fair itself has improved from three years ago, said Bishop.
“We had a big downturn a few years ago in 2008 when the bottom went out of the economy,” Bishop said as he greeted students to the fair. “We had a bit of a rebound in 2009 and a bit of a rebound this year in the fall. … If the economy keeps moving forward, we’re going to be back to a wait list again for the fall career fair.”
Sarada Weerasinghe, a graduate student in accounting, said he has seen the number of opportunities at career fairs shrink in the last several years.
“This year seemed to be much more upbeat than 2008, 2009,” Weerasinghe said.
New perspectives
According to 4,600 employers in an annual recruiting trends report by the Collegiate Employment Research Institute, there is a 10 percent increase in intentions of employers to hire at the bachelor’s degree level, a jump from the 3 percent increase last year.
“One of the interesting twists we’ve seen in the last few years is demand on competency and skills graduates bring into the workplace,” Bishop said.
Dave Vering, one of the recruiters at the MSU Diversity Career Fair manning the Michigan Farm Bureau’s booth, said the present level of hiring is not back to the earlier part of the 2000s. Jobs are coming back, although not in the way they once were.
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“We have a large temporary pool of employees we maintain and they’re important people to us, but they are paid any hourly wage,” Vering said.
