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Show College graduates face very gloomy outlook for jobs The national recession is casting its gloomy shadow over the job outlook for 1992 college graduates throughout the United States. However, many economists and companies report they are beginning beginn-ing to see some light at the end of the tunnel and, though economic recovery may be slow, things are looking up. The labor market in Utah is doing rather well compared to the rest of the nation. Nationally the unemployment rate is 7.2 percent while Utah's unemployment rate is about 4.7 percent. The job outlook for 1992 college graduates in Utah isn't as bright as it was in 1990. For each of the next-three next-three years, approximately 40,000 job openings will occur in the Utah labor market. The majority of these positions, 60 percent (about 24,000), will replace current workers who leave the labor force. The remaining 40 percent (about 16,000) will result from growth in the economy. Only about 20 percent per-cent (or one in five) of these jobs will require a four-year degree, but over 50 percent of the jobs require some form of higher education or post-secondary training. National statistics show that about 92 percent of the college graduates who enter the job market through the year 2000 will be able to find college level jobs. The demand de-mand for college graduates rises when there is an increase in the demand de-mand for employees in an occupation occupa-tion requiring a degree, when there is a need to replace college graduates who leave the job market and when jobs which don't traditionally tradi-tionally require college education are upgraded. The national projected job openings open-ings for the period of 1988-2000 is over 21.6 m ill ion . This is an average of about 1,800,000 each year. The number of jobs requiring a four-year degree is expected to increase in-crease 50 percent during this time period. The number of college graduates entering the market will exceed the number of openings requiring four-year four-year degrees, but this will average out to an oversupply of less than 8 percent. People who decide to continue their education after high school earn a significant amount more than ; those who do not. Nationally, vocational voca-tional school graduates earn 20-50 percent more than high school graduates in male-dominated fields and 50-90 percent more in female-dominated female-dominated fields. In Utah, the job category of pro fessional, paraprofessional and technical occupations is projected to have a growth rate of 2.1 percent per year from 1990 through 1995. These occupations include accountants, accoun-tants, teachers, engineers, nurses, writers, lawyers and computer programmers. pro-grammers. Sales occupations are also expected ex-pected to grow at a rate of 2. 1 percent per-cent per year through 1995. The sales category occupations include sales representatives, sales clerks and sales agents. Managerial and administrative occupations are expected to grow at less than 1.8 percent per year. Nationally, the field showing the most potential for growth is health care. The health care industry added 383,000 jobs during 1990-91, and 9 percent of total non-agricultural jobs are found in health care, up from 3 percent in 1960. Biotechnology, chemical engineering engineer-ing and environmental engineering are also fields currently showing growth potential. Nationally, the number of new college graduates companies hire has dropped 30 percent since 1989. Many companies are able to hire workers with experience who have been laid off from another job instead in-stead of hiring new college graduates. Some companies may be waiting to see if the recession is truly tru-ly over before expanding or hiring new people. Locally, recruiting on college campuses has decreased about 30 percent this year compared to 1991. The companies recruiting are primarily looking for engineering, business, accounting and computer science students. Brig ham Young University has seen an increase in the recruitment of education students. In Utah County, many of the local companies recruit college graduates from the local colleges and universities. However, there are many local companies looking for workers that don't participate in the formal recruiting process at the universities uni-versities or colleges. There may be opportunities for graduates to look for jobs with small local companies that have good growth potential. The University of Utah currently lists between 30,000 to 50,000 jobs. October, November and February are the most popular months for recruiting at the University of Utah. Six months after graduation about 95 percent of the students registered with the placement center have jobs. Of this 95 percent, only 10-15 of the graduates consider their jobs to be temporary. |