Local Statistics Mirror National Trends

Over the next several weeks, college students across the nation will don caps and gowns, cross the stage to receive their diplomas and head out into the world of employment.

Thanks in large part to baby boomers retiring and companies preparing for further retirements around the corner, those students will be entering one of the best job markets for graduates in recent years. According to figures from the National Association of College and Employers (NACE), employers’ hiring of new college graduates is expected to be up more than 17 percent over 2006, marking a fourth straight year of double-digit increases. Many students are once again receiving multiple employment offers, something that was unheard of during the early 2000s.

And the outlook for college graduates in the Chicago job market reflects – and is even slightly rosier than – the national trend, said Gillian Steele, director of the Career Center at DePaul.

“In Chicago, we’re seeing opportunities continue to grow in all major sectors: consulting, health care, retail, insurance, finance and government,” she said. “We’ve also seen growth in the non-profit sector, which is important to us, as roughly 28 percent of DePaul graduates go on to work for a non-profit organization, nine percentage points above the national average.”

The hottest fields in this year’s employment market for graduates are marketing, investment management, financial analysis, public relations/advertising, computer graphics and animation, information technology, international business and consulting.

Furthermore, starting salaries in the Chicago area are strong, up anywhere from five percent to 15 percent over last spring, Steele added. Accounting positions start in the low to mid $50,000s; computer science and information technology grads start anywhere from the high $40,000s to the low $60,000s, depending on the specific field; and business administration graduates start with salaries in the mid $40,000s. These are all slightly higher than the national average, where NACE statistics show a starting salary increase of anywhere from two to 14 percent over one year ago.

A broad skill set is in demand by employers this year, Steele said. Companies are looking for everything from sales, marketing and communication skills, to graduates who have experience working with people who have special needs. Grads who are culturally diverse and fluent in multiple languages, particularly Spanish, are also highly sought-after by employers right now.

While the prospects for full-time employment are better than they have been in a long time, students should still consider ways to gain work experience before graduating, Steele said.

“We’ve seen a lot of companies set up new internship programs as a strategy to prepare for the coming wave of baby boomers retiring,” she said. “More than half of all interns end up receiving a full-time offer from the company where they are serving an internship, so that is another path to employment.”

With 23,149 students on two Chicago and four suburban campuses, DePaul University is the largest Catholic university in the nation and the largest private, not-for-profit university in the Midwest.