Americans who received bachelor's degrees in 2008 were roughly twice as likely to be unemployed after a year than were their peers who graduated in 1993 and 2000, the Education Department's National Center for Education Statistics said in a report Thursday. Mostly to blame, the researchers said: the recession.
Within one year of completing a bachelor's degree, 2008 graduates had an unemployment rate of 9 percent, compared to 4 percent for 1993 graduates and 5 percent for those who earned bachelor's degrees in 2000. Female graduates in 2008 were less likely to be unemployed than were their male peers -- 8 percent vs. 10 percent -- and white graduates had a lower unemployment rate (8 percent) than did other ethnic groups, whose rates ranged from 12 to 16 percent.
Far fewer of the 2008 graduates (64 percent) had full-time jobs one year out of college than did their peers from the 2000 (78 percent) and 1994 (79 percent) cohorts.
Read more at Inside Higher Ed: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/03/07/us-data-show-2008-graduates-hit-hard-recession