(
)
Beaten down by heavy debt and out of work, today’s college grads are the new underclass. Many are struggling to stave off financial ruin.
It’s so tough that some eight out of 10 graduates this year are moving back home, according to a recent poll by a consulting firm. Some will continue their studies — betting on an economic turnaround later — and others are criss-crossing the country, desperate for work.
Alex Hoffman, 23, who now lives in Atlanta, is looking for a well-paid tech job in New York City. It’s been 12 months since he graduated from Vanderbilt University with a B.S. in human and organizational development. He spent the past year barely making ends meet with his own college services company.
Forget about the unemployment dips. It just hasn’t lifted enough grads. “There’s a huge rate of unemployment among graduates,” said Hoffman, who’s packing up and moving to Park Slope, Brooklyn, to try his luck in the Big Apple. “Some of my friends who graduated two years ago still don’t have jobs, or else they’re working at the local guitar center.”
Madison Grieco, a straight-A student — bachelor of music from Berklee College of Music in Boston, with an emphasis in business courses from Columbia and Harvard universities — complained her job search is “extraordinarily difficult.” She graduated in January.
“I’ve applied for between five and 10 jobs a day, and have had a bunch of interviews that have gone really well,” said Grieco, a Brooklyn resident who is seeking a career in music publishing. “Each time they say the same thing — we’ve got no jobs, hopefully we can call you in a few months.”
Grieco, too, has her own side gig, reselling concert tickets on the Internet. It helps pay the rent and food bills, as she works as an unpaid intern for a record company in Manhattan.
Paying the bills is the same worry for Joshua Peagler. He’s a political science and history major, graduating this year from New York’s Columbia College. Peagler, 22, who’s from a low-income family outside Pittsburgh, and who attended Columbia on a full academic scholarship, wants a job in television production. Nothing doing.
“At Columbia, they feed you this mentality that you will be successful — things will work out — so that plays into our mentality,” Peagler said. “On the one hand we know the jobs are hard to come by, but on the other hand, we are trying to be as optimistic as possible because jobs do have to open.”
Not so far. “I am applying everywhere and am not getting any job offers back,” said Peagler, who has interned at MTV and once was a runner at CBS Sports. “My entire life before this, I knew each step of the way. Now I am entering a great unknown, which is frustrating and unsettling.”
“It’s brutal for the average undergraduate,” said Rick Raymond, vice president of marketing at College Parents of America, an advocacy and support group for college parents. “Graduates are not the first to be hired when the jobs markets begins to improve,” he added. “We’re seeing shocking numbers of people with undergraduates degrees who can’t get work.”
This year, some three million young people are expected to graduate from college. Facing a double-digit unemployment rate for young people, 85 percent of them will initially move back home with their parents, and that’s up from 67 percent in 2006, according to a poll by researcher Twentysomething Inc. Peaker is headed back home soon to his family.
“Reality has hit graduates like a ton of bricks,” said Marc Ostrofsky, the father of five teenage girls, three in college.
Ostrofsky, an acclaimed Internet businessman, should know. Grieco is his stepdaughter, and he’s currently touting his new book, “Get Rich Click!” to a Web-savvy generation of college students — as a route to fabulous riches.
“As the characters in the film ‘The Social Network’ said, you either get a job or create a job,” he said.
Raymond at College Parents of America said that’s one upside of the horrible jobs market, the large increase in grads setting up business.
Hoffman, though, said having his own business has one drawback. “I don’t make enough to pay off my college loans,” he said.