• printer friendly
• mail this article
• iPod format
• digg

Photo

As the national unemployment rate rose from a nine-year high of 6.1 percent in May to 6.4 percent in June, many UCLA graduates contributed to the rising percentages.

According to a poll conducted by online employment magazine CollegeRecruiter.com, 37 percent of 1,000 college students and recent graduates thought it would take six months or more to find a job, as 26 percent thought the search would take two to three months.

Henry Lam, who graduated from UCLA in the spring with a sociology degree, said a month after graduation, he is still unemployed.

“I expected the market to be pretty bad right now,” said Lam, who is still looking for a summer job.

The California unemployment rate for June stayed at 6.7 percent – the rate it was in May.

Tom Lieser, senior economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast, said he was surprised by the state statistics since unemployment usually goes up in June, when students and teachers begin summer vacations.

Though recent graduates often look for employment at job fairs, Lieser said firms do not actively recruit new workers when the economy is stalled.

“We’re looking at the bottom of this right now – lots of people are displaced, but (there is) not a lot of new hiring,” he said.

However, Lieser believes California’s economy will “come back eventually” – maybe as soon as during the school term.

“Next year’s graduates in the Class of 2004 will have a better chance than the Class of 2003,” Lieser said.

First-year Leonard Cheung said he hopes the job market will improve by the time he graduates from UCLA.

“Not too many jobs are available, and it’s a good time to be in school still,” Cheung said.

Lieser said the San Francisco Bay area, where 10 percent of workers lost their jobs after the dot-com bust, is the hardest-hit area for California job seekers.

Susanna Yao, a 2003 graduate with a economics degree, said going to UCLA has not helped her get hired in San Francisco as much as she had hoped it would.

“The company looks for personality during the interview and working experience,” Yao said. “Maybe UCLA or a top-10 school attracts their attention, but I don’t think it’s a major attraction.”

Jubi Park, a 2003 graduate with a business economics degree, said because she has been having trouble getting hired, she decided to apply to graduate schools to get her master’s degree.

As a Korean citizen, Park said she and her other international graduate friends have had trouble getting hired because many firms want to hire people with U.S. citizenship.

Jon Kaplan, associate director of the MBA Career Management Center, said graduates can use their unemployment time to their advantage by researching the jobs they are applying for and questioning whether they will “burn out” in that line of work.

People have new appreciation for finding jobs, and take extra care with their applications, Kaplan said.

“I think people have a better understanding of what it takes to find an opportunity,” he said of new job seekers.

Yao, who wants a career in financial service, said after submitting 20 resumes to different companies , she has had roughly 10 interviews in the last two months. However, she has not found an opening with the salary, benefits and working environment she dreamed of during school.

Although Lam said he wants a career planning events for a nonprofit organization, he is willing to settle for a different job until the right offer comes along.

“There’s a difference between a job and a career, and I'm looking for both,” he said.