New Grads: Good Luck Finding a Finance Job
http://on.wsj.com/1dYEIZl By Melissa Korn
Sluggish finance hiring is dragging down the job market for new college graduates, according to the latest recruiting trends report from Michigan State University’s Collegiate Employment Research Institute.
While employers forecast a 7% increase in undergraduate hiring for the class graduating in 2014, buoyed by gains in professional services and manufacturing, that growth would have hit double digits without the slump in financial services. Hiring for financial services is expected to shrink by 40% across all degree programs, found the report, which includes responses from nearly 6,500 hiring managers and recruiters.
At the undergraduate level, job openings in financial services will shrink by 27%, though students majoring in economics, finance and accounting—the largest sources for new talent in that industry—will fare just fine because of strong hiring outlooks in other corners of the market, says Phil Gardner, the institute’s director.
M.B.A.s won’t be so lucky: Financial-services respondents said they expect to cut jobs for graduate business students by 58% this year, government employers forecast an 86% plunge, and overall hiring is expected to decline by nearly 25%.
The report calls the contraction for students with advanced degrees in finance “disturbing,” since the supply of M.B.A.s continues to increase while demand for such credentials wanes. (Many M.B.A.s are looking to the tech sector as opportunities in finance dry up.)
Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Citigroup and others have announced massive layoffs in their mortgage operations in recent months amid shrinking portfolios of bad loans and lighter refinancing activity. He says he expects hiring to bounce back after those job cuts are all implemented and the firms can reassess their labor needs.
There are still plenty of bright spots beyond Wall Street. Hospitality, information services and manufacturing companies forecast gains of more than 20% each for bachelor’s degree students. And students pursuing undergraduate degrees in engineering, social services, sciences and even the liberal arts can expect to see more companies come calling this year.
And more employers are expressing an interest in hiring PhDs with expertise in computer science, engineering and data analytics. Gardner says that he could barely get 100 employers to speak about PhD recruiting just a half-dozen years ago; now, the survey includes more than 300 startups, tech firms and other companies seeking doctoral hires.
Still, even those employers that do plan to actively recruit students this year aren’t yet setting firm hiring targets. Just one quarter of employers who hired last year have definite targets for this year—well below the 50% who had defined goals back in the 2011-2012 academic year. Employers who didn’t hire students last year are even more hesitant to commit to new goals.