For recent NJ college grads, the job search has been rough as firms eye inflation

In his search for a job, North Jersey resident and recent college graduate Colin Logsdon sometimes sends out up to 100 applications a week.

Logsdon, from Chatham, had done everything right up to this point. He went to Iona College and studied finance. He was a D1 athlete. And he went to New York University to further his education, this time on a fellowship.

“I would get really disappointed, I would hardly hear back from anyone — even if you got a rejection letter, it would be like weeks after,” he said in a recent interview.

For now, he plans to continue his search for research assistant positions, particularly in health care, attend job search training and continue volunteer clinical trial research.

Logsdon isn’t alone.

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With over 3 million New Jerseyans holding college degrees — according to the U.S Bureau of Labor Statistics — the prospect of new graduates finding work has become increasingly difficult.

After an explosion of job growth in the immediate aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic — remember the Great Resignation? — hiring has slowed, especially in white collar jobs, said James Hughes, an economist and professor of urban planning at Rutgers University.

After COVID-19, “it was a really great time to be a college graduate, because firms were trying to build up staff,” Hughes said. “But now they’re filled up.”

Jobs in banking, finance and marketing have been filled

Jobs in software development, banking and finance, and marketing have all been filled, said Nick Fuentes, director of economic research for North America at Indeed Hiring Lab.

Since January 2021, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates has been higher than the unemployment rate in the general population, according to the New York Federal Reserve . It was the opposite between 1990 and 2013.

What that means is that recent college graduates — those aged 22 to 27 — are more likely than the general population to be without a job.

In a survey this spring of 226 employers across several industries, businesses said they planned to hire nearly 6% fewer college graduates than they did in the previous year, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

And job openings in professional roles for new graduates are down this year compared to February 2022 at the peak of the Great Resignation, according to federal data .

Year over year hiring was 6.9% lower in the New York City metro area, which includes North Jersey, according to career social media site LinkedIn .

Inflation and budget constraints dampen hiring

“Many companies are dealing with bigger operating costs due to inflation and budget constraints that make them cautious about hiring more people,” said Colleen Georges, a career coach in Piscataway.

From March 2022 to July 2023, the Federal Reserve hiked its key interest rate from near zero to a range of 5% to 5.25% — a 23-year high — in an effort to tame a pandemic-induced inflation spike.

Recent reports underscore that inflation eased notably in May, with a key measure the Fed follows closely at 2.6%. That’s above the Fed’s 2% goal but the lowest since March 2021 and down from a peak of 5.6% in mid-2022

But Jerome Powell, who chairs the Federal Reserve, has maintained a cautious stance about lowering rates since inflation unexpectedly picked up in the first quarter following a significant slowdown last year.

“Interest rates are affecting business expansions,” said Vincent Vicari, regional director of the Bergen County Small Business Development Center.

“Companies are tightening up, because they can’t borrow money to expand," Vicari said. "That limits the capacity of jobs.”

New grads can count research, internships as 'job experience'

How do new graduates find a job when companies say they only want to hire people with experience?

“Basically, so many of these positions are asking for significant work experience, three to five years, while labeling those applications as entry-level,” said Logsdon, 23, the Chatham resident.

One way to get a leg up is to count your experience inside and outside the classroom when considering those first few years of experience, said Mary Alice Barrows, director of career services at William Paterson University in Wayne.

Everything from research positions to clubs and student organizations to internships counts toward those years of experience, she said.

“It’s about what you’re doing in the classroom and outside of the classroom during your time at college,” Barrows added.

Some students have lucked out.

Tiffany Tshimanga is a 2024 nursing graduate from Willian Paterson who works as a nurse at Hackensack Meridian Health.

During college she worked as a patient care technician at the same health care network, essentially an assistant for nurses, learning things like basic patient-nurse etiquette.

“I just applied to the same place I was already working within the same network,” she said. “I guess you could say I was lucky because I was able to get that experience before actually working.”

Overqualified and underemployed

The New York Fed found that, as of March this year, more than 40% of recent college graduates were “underemployed” — working at jobs that didn’t require a college degree. The New York Fed also notes the unemployment rate for “Young Workers” without a college degree — which is a much more comparable group to recent college graduates — is always much higher than for recent college graduates.

Jonathan Klan, a recent graduate of Southern New Hampshire University who lives just over the border from New Jersey in Rockland County, said he’s found jobs in retail just to make ends meet during his career search.

After studying business management and despite having a summer internship, he estimates having applied to well over 1,000 jobs across such industries as hospitality, business, accounting and medicine, without success.

The Strada Institute for the Future of Work and the Burning Glass Institute, in a March report , found that 52% of college graduates were “underemployed” a year after graduation, while 45% were underemployed even a decade after college.

Missing out on personal and professional growth due to COVID

The COVID-19 pandemic upended what is supposed to be a time of personal and professional growth for many college students, experts say.

Many of those who graduated this year started their college experience on Zoom rather than in college dorms and lecture halls.

College graduates are “very uncomfortable with the social skills that are required to interview, like talking to someone, calling them on the phone, looking them in the eye,” said Beth Hendler-Grunt, a career coach and president of Next Great Step, a career counseling center based out of Livingston.

“It’s just things they have not had a chance to practice quite as much,” she said, pointing to a litany of college experiences students missed out on that would help prepare them for a career.

New Jersey’s college campuses had to close down and switch to virtual learning during the first wave of the pandemic in early 2020, then later operated with intense public health measures in place such as masking and social distancing.

The National Institute of Health, in a 2022 paper , detailed a high rate of mental health issues for college students including anxiety, depression and learning difficulty because of the pandemic.

The shotgun approach

Cynthia Michalewski, the senior assistant director at Ramapo College’s career center in Mahwah, cautioned against what amounted to a shotgun approach: sending out hundreds or thousands of job applications in the hope that something would stick.

She said networking is key. “You have to speak to people that are in those roles or in those companies that you want to work at,” she said. "It's all about who gets to know you."

"People are saying they're struggling," Michalewski said. "How are they applying, what methodology are they using to apply? Is it simply that passive method? How much is the active method being used?"

Job-searching website Indeed.com likewise advised against this shotgun approach.

“When you apply for a multitude of jobs, it's easy to submit the same resume and cover letter for each,” the company wrote.

“Make your resume and cover letter stand out to hiring managers by tailoring them to not only the industry you're in but also the job position and company, too.”

Does a college degree still matter?

Logsdon isn’t counting himself out.

His hope is that through doing volunteer research work and teaming up with a career coach, something will come through. And his parents have been supportive every step of the way.

“Twenty years ago, saying that you were living with your parents may have been looked down upon,” he said.

The Social Security Administration estimates that with a bachelor’s degree you can earn at least $600,000 more over your lifetime than without one.

From Barrows’ point of view, yes — a college degree makes the difference.

“The bachelor’s degree is a foundation,” she said. “It’s a combination of the academic side and the extracurricular side you’re going to get out of it.”

Daniel Munoz covers business, consumer affairs, labor and the economy for NorthJersey.com and The Record.

Email: munozd@northjersey.com ; Twitter: @danielmunoz100 and Facebook

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: For recent NJ college grads, the job search has been rough as firms eye inflation