Desperate times call for desperate measures and at a time when the U.S. is experiencing its worst unemployment rate since the Great Depression, no one knows that better than the class of 2020.
According to a new survey from job posting site Monster, a majority of new grads are quickly realizing the severity of today’s hiring picture and settling for any job they can get, even if it’s not a great fit.
“This is certainly a difficult time to be a college graduate,” Monster CEO Scott Gutz told Yahoo Finance’s YFi PM. “One of the interesting things that we found was about 55% of graduates were saying they are applying to jobs they know are not the right fit. There is a sense of desperation.”
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Worse yet, Monster’s survey revealed that more than 75% of graduates said they’d be graduating with at least some level of student debt, with 35% saying that total exceeded $10,000. Gutz says that equation boils down to a heightened sense of settling for any job at any cost, even if it comes with a lower-than-ideal salary, which about half of all college grads said they’d be willing to accept.
“Those people are saying I am applying for a job, I know I'm not perfect [and] it’s not perfect for me, but I need to get something,” Gutz said.
Outside of the labor force’s newest entrants, things aren’t looking much better for the average worker either, with the unemployment rate expected to rise above 20% later this year. That job picture has led to a certain sense of stress for a lot of people lucky enough to maintain employment through the downturn, Gutz says.
“I think what we are definitely seeing is burnout with respect to work from home,” he said. “Roughly 51% of the people that we surveyed indicated they are now officially burned out.” On top of that, nearly half of workers said they didn’t plan to take vacation or time off out of fear of jeopardizing their position.
Overall, Monster says job postings and traffic for roles tied to tech have been impacted the least, with postings for software developers and network engineers showing strength. Optimistically, Gutz also noted a more recent uptick in job postings in hard hit services like hospitality and personal care.
Zack Guzman is the host of YFi PM as well as a senior writer and on-air reporter covering entrepreneurship, cannabis, startups, and breaking news at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on Twitter @zGuz.
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