The future is bright for business graduates

William Woods Business

Current Master of Business Administration students who may have entered graduate school in a somewhat questionable economy: the light at the end of the tunnel may be in view.

As of last week, the U.S. unemployment rate is 5.3 percent — the lowest it’s been since April, 2008. But what kinds of industries are these jobs in? And are they good jobs?

A report published last week from Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce brings in a bit of optimism to business students’ hiring outlook.

The report, titled Good Jobs Are Back: College Graduates Are First in Line, separates annual earnings of new jobs added in the United States since 2010 — what they’ve dubbed “good jobs” (more than $53,000/year), “middle-wage jobs” ($32,000 – 53,000) and “low-wage jobs” (less than $32,000). Of the 6.6 million jobs added in the recovery, the report finds that 44 percent were good jobs, 29 percent were middle-waged and 27 percent were low-wage.

Of these 2.9 million good jobs created since the recovery, 2.8 million have been filled by college graduates (97 percent).

What does this mean for business graduates?

According to the report, managers and management analysts, financial analysts, market research analysts and marketing specialists were among the high-wage occupations with the largest growth during the recovery. These occupations experienced, on average, 414,500 jobs added between 2010 and 2014, with average median wages of $63,750/year.

While middle-wage jobs have yet to achieve full recovery (still 900,000 jobs short of pre-recession employment levels), the fact that well-paying jobs have recovered shows that things are looking up. The higher-paying jobs are typically the last to go and first to come back during an economic recession, according to the study.

As a future manager or analyst, it’s important to keep developing the hard and soft business skills to make you stand out to employers, but perhaps we can do that now with a little peace of mind. The jobs are out there, and they’re good ones.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *