For the first time in two years, employers are making plans to increase their hiring of new college graduates but seniors looking for jobs will still meet stiff competition.
Firms surveyed by the National Association of Colleges and Employers project that they will hire 12.7 percent more graduates from the class of 2004 than they did a year ago -- a hint that the economy may be turning upward.
"It's been two years since we've seen employers project an increase in college hiring, so there is reason to be cautiously optimistic,'' NACE executive director Marilyn Mackes said.
At the start of the 2000-01 academic year, employers projected a 23 percent increase in new-graduate hiring but cut back instead as the economy started to falter. The next year, 2001-02, they projected a nearly 20 percent drop-off in hiring and last year projected a 3.6 percent decline.
Approximately half of the 242 employers that responded to NACE's annual survey this year said they expected to increase hiring, while 28 percent planned cutbacks. The rest anticipated no change.
"Not everyone is expecting an increase. There are still those employers expecting further cutbacks, saying that the rebound in the economy has not touched them,'' said Camille Luckenbaugh, a NACE spokeswoman.
The optimism was largely confined to the service industry, which projected a 22.2 percent increase in campus hiring. Manufacturing, which has seen jobs plummet since the start of the 2001 recession, projected a more modest increase of 3.4 percent.
The responses also varied by region. Employers in the Northeast were the most optimistic, with 15.3 percent expecting to increase hiring. Those in the South were the most pessimistic with only 7.2 percent projecting an upturn.
"It's important for college students to understand that, despite the positive projections, they will face significant competition for jobs,'' Mackes said.
Although it's too early to gauge salaries for upcoming graduates, Luckenbaugh said employers are telling NACE that they will likely be flat.
Last year, many graduates were confronted with declining salary offers compared with the previous year, according to data NACE collected from 189 U.S. colleges and universities.
Salaries dropped in many of the technical fields. Graduates of the computer sciences, still one of the highest-paid disciplines, saw starting salaries fall 4.7 percent to an average of $47,109. Offers to information sciences and systems grads dropped 7.5 percent to $38,282.
Among the business disciplines, starting salary offers to accounting graduates rose on average 2.9 percent to $40,647. Marketing salaries fell 1 percent to $34,038. Graduates in management information systems experienced one of the biggest declines among business majors with their salary offers falling 4.6 percent to $40,556.
There was little movement among engineering graduates. Computer engineers were offered an average $51,343, up less than 1 percent. Salaries averaged $48,585 for mechanical engineering graduates, $41,669 for civil engineers, and $49,794 for electrical engineering graduates.
Salary offers were mixed among liberal arts and social sciences graduates. Graduates in political science and government, for example, saw average offers jump 9 percent to $31,183 and psychology grads saw a 3.5 percent hike to an average $27,683.
Sociology majors lost ground with average salary offers down 2.7 percent to $28,065. Job offers to English majors averaged $28,786, a 1.2 percent increase.
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