Infographic: Recent and soon-to-be college grads are optimistic about the job market

If you’re like me and graduated from college just before or during the last major recession, you will no doubt remember just how difficult it was for either you or many of your friends to find a job. Don’t remember when that was? Below is the American Staffing Association’s Staffing Index data to illustrate it: It started in December 2007 in the United States and lasted a very long 19 months, running all the way to June 2009. It wasn’t fun and searching for a job with the minimal amount of real-world experience that you gain in school through internships and class projects was difficult, especially with recent or soon-to-be graduates competing against those with much more experience for many of the same roles. 

Recently, things have been looking up with the Staffing Index hitting its highest ever total of 107.54 this past December (ASA has been recording weekly data since the Staffing Index was created in June 2006). That optimism has apparently carried over to today’s college students and recent graduates as they gear up for the job hunt. A new survey from Adecco details the results of questions asked to 1001 respondents, aged 18-24, about the near future, job preferences, and their outlook on the upcoming search.  The survey broke respondents up into Generation Z (those born after 1995) and Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1995) with the former making up just over 44% of the group and the latter coming in at just under 56%.

The full survey results can be seen here but below are a few of the more interesting findings in infographic form: