A new survey of employers by Michigan State University anticipates continuous growth in the job market for college graduates.
The researchers compiled the Recruiting Trends report, the largest annual survey of employers in the nation, which pegs job opportunities to expand by 12 percent across all degrees in 2019-20 for the tenth consecutive year.
Around 2,800 employers from every major industrial sector in every state were surveyed for the report. Amid plans to reduce hiring for master’s degrees, the report found that employers are looking forward to hiring nearly 63,555 new graduates, mostly those with bachelor’s degrees.
“It seems employers were a little more confident this year than I had expected. That’s likely because the economy hasn’t really caught up with them, so employers are hiring, particularly at the associate’s and bachelor’s level,” Phil Gardner, survey author and director of MSU’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute said.
During the current year, those with more than 500 employees slowed their pace of hiring. Smaller companies with less than 99 employees are employing graduates at a higher pace and plan to increase their new graduate hiring by 37 percentage points.
The report noted a strong hiring trend in finance, insurance services organizations, and the construction industry. Among industries, educational services and health care is key to recent job growth.
Most of the companies are looking forward to employing the graduates who can collaborate across a range of disciplines. Students who have worked as an intern would also raise their chance of getting the job as employers prefer to hire those with professional experience.
“Not only are those employees going to work across disciplines, they’re going across business functions and across organizational, political, cultural and nation-state boundaries,” Garnder added.