Tough year for college grads seeking jobs

“We’re seeing reduced demand from employers and increased competition among job seekers translate into lower starting salaries,” said Marilyn Mackes, NACE executive director. “We’ve come to expect starting salary offers to increase, and, for many fields, to increase substantially. This year, we’ve seen a lot of disciplines lose ground and those that have made gains have, for the most part, posted very small increases.” In the business fields, accounting graduates earned a less than 1 percent increase, for an average starting salary offer of $39,768. Starting salary offers fell, however, in most business disciplines. For example, management information systems grads saw their average starting salary offer drop 6.3 percent to $42,705; the average offer to business administration graduates fell 5.3 percent to $36,429; and economics/finance graduates are now averaging $39,953, a 1.5 percent drop. Worst hit among the business disciplines were logistics/materials management graduates, who have seen their average offer drop 9.1 percent since last year at this time to $39,407. The drop can be attributed in part to the fall in average starting salary offers for management trainee jobs, which account for the majority of their offers both last year and this year.

Other data:

• The average starting salary for computer science grads fell below $50,000; they are now averaging $49,596, a 5.9 percent drop from last year at this time.

• Political science graduates were hit with one of the biggest decreases—their average offer fell 13.4 percent to $28,397. Psychology majors, down 12.8 percent over last year, now average $26,456. English majors are currently averaging $28,488, a decrease of 9.6 percent. History majors, however, saw their average offer increase 2.7 percent to $31,201, and visual and performing arts majors got a boost of 4.5 percent, pushing their average up to $27,575.

• Nursing graduates are among the more fortunate. They are averaging $38,459, an increase of 4.8 percent over last year.

The final salary report for the Class of 2002 will be published this month, but it’s unlikely that the report will show a reversal in the trend toward lower salaries, said Mackes. ““Now the question is, will this trend continue with the Class of 2003?.”