Looking for a job after graduation is daunting enough, but searching for one amid an ongoing pandemic — during which 22 million Americans have applied for unemployment benefits — is foreign territory for graduates and employers alike.
With the coronavirus closures continuing to tighten budgets all around, more and more companies are announcing hiring freezes, canceling summer internships and pushing back start dates. Worse, many businesses, still adjusting to their new remote realities, just aren’t prioritizing hiring at this point.
“This year’s graduating students expected to graduate into one of the best hiring economies in recent times, and now they are not,” wrote Jessica Goldsmith Barzilay, acting director of the Kean University Office of Career Services & International Studies, in an email to Diverse, referring to an economy which, in January, had previously added 225,000 jobs and boasted a 3.6% unemployment rate. Now, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office, that rate will likely average 14% during the second quarter.
“There is so much uncertainty that many businesses are holding off on hiring,” Goldsmith Barzilay added.
Her observation is borne out by a poll of 289 employers, conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE).
As of April 24, NACE’s poll – open until the end of April – found that 59% of employers weren’t revoking any offers, for now, but 22% were considering it. And, based on 75 responses, about 70% of offers to interns, for the summer of 2020, are being revoked.
