College Class of 2009: Fewer Jobs in Hand, But Still Confident

The College Class of 2009 is graduating with fewer jobs in hand than was the case with their 2007 and 2008 peers, but they remain optimisitic.

NACE's 2009 Student Survey shows that just 19.7 percent of those who applied for a job actually had one; in comparison, 51 percent of those graduating in 2007 and 26 percent of those graduating in 2008 who applied had a job before graduation.

Despite this, new grads appear to be undaunted. More than half of responding seniors who say they are job hunting said they were confident they would have jobs within three months of graduation. Ironically, although most responding students say they have started looking for jobs, the majority—59 percent—had not actually applied for one as of the end of April, when NACE's survey closed.