Seniors Prep for Dwindling Jobs
By Elizabeth Ambriz-Mendez
Santa Clara students seeking jobs or internships may find themselves stressed out due to the implications of unemployment. The United States generated only 115,000 jobs last month, well below expectations, and the least since October.
The unemployment rate also fell to 8.1 percent, but for the wrong reason: workers abandoned the labor force. The government only counts people as unemployed if they're actively looking for work. In April 340,000 Americans stopped looking and dropped out of the labor force, which is why the unemployment rate fell slightly. The dropouts mean only 63.6 percent of working-age Americans were working or looking for work, the lowest percentage since 1981. And in California the unemployment rate is currently 11 percent, its lowest in three years.
Chintan Desai is a finance major who is weeks away from graduating. He said the decreased amount of pay for new hires will increase the pressure on seniors to pay off their school loans. And if the government increases the interest rate on subsidized loans, this pressure might grow even more unsettling.
"Seniors deciding to attend graduate school instead of looking for a full time job will be adding on more loans, and they don't realize companies aren't looking to hire grad students that don't have experience," said Desai. Dr. Kenneth Faulve-Montojo of the Santa Clara political science department is currently teaching a course focused on U.S. economic policies. According to him, the faltering of growth in the economy spells out trouble for President Obama's re-election endeavors.
"History shows that if the unemployment rate isn't below 7 percent, then the incumbents don't make it," said Faulve-Montojo.
According to Faulve-Montojo, it is too early to discern the trend. Figuring out the reasons for unemployment is important to understand economic problems.
Even if President Obama was to think of ways to improve the economy, Republicans may not be very willing to help.
"They don't like Obama and wouldn't want to do anything that could help him in November," said Faulve-Montojo.
Obama's Republican opponent, Mitt Romney, said the country should be adding 500,000 jobs a month and that any unemployment rate above 4 percent is "not cause for celebration." The rate has not been that low seen since the last days of the Clinton administration.
"We seem to be slowing down, not speeding up," Romney said on Fox News Channel. "This is not progress."
Faulve-Montojo believes the United States may be getting better at producing the same amount of goods with fewer resources and less labor, at the cost of jobs that no longer pay as well.
Desai worked at Cisco over the summer, and said that candidates applying with a few years experience in addition to a graduate degree are more likely to get an interview in comparison to those with only an MBA. Desai also thinks juniors and sophomores should be concerned that if employers aren't willing to offer as many internships, students won't have the experience necessary to beat their competition when the time comes to apply for jobs.
"Companies view time as money and if they spend more time on interns rather than hiring full time employees, they're going to feel like they're not adding value to their company," said Desai.
Contact Elizabeth Ambriz-Mendez at eambrizmendez@scu.edu or (408)554-4849. Paul Wiseman and Christopher S. Rugaber of the Associated Press contributed to this article.