Graduating into the Worst Job Market in Twenty Years

April 6th, 2010 by Matt DiChiara| Posted in Off Campus Apartments | 1 Comment »

Hey kids, rock and roll, nobody tells you where to go.

(photo courtesy of Schuyler Sokolow)

So alright college students, you are about two months away from graduation. No more homework, just really, really important life decisions to make! And just in time for the worst job market in decades! Tight.

What should you do? There is a lot to consider. It could be difficult to get the type of job that allows you to live where you’d like; the lifestyle that you developed in college will probably face a tricky assimilation back into your parent’s house; and your last minute research into the Peace Corps revealed less of a pina colada vibe and more a boil your own water before you drink it vibe.

But somewhere between living at home and holding out for the Wall Street investment banking job and teaching English in Azerbaijan (both of which are noble pursuits in their own unique ways) are all sorts of opportunities in sometimes overlooked cities.

So how should you decide what to do and where to go to do it?

Well, in the normal years recent graduates look to move to cities where they have some kind of connection; their hometowns, the closest big city to their hometown, or a city that is located closely to their college or a group of friends just kind of picks a destination. For example, most people from my hometown moved to Boston, most people from my college moved to New York and most of my friends from college moved to apartments Washington, D.C.

The practical element of these decisions is primarily driven by the hope of employment, otherwise a lot of times it doesn’t make sense to really move out of your parent’s place. But what kind of attitude is that? How old are you, 22? And you are just going to stick around familiar places and not get out there into the world and chop it up? It’d be a damn sad day for the American youth that a little recession got in the way of some exploration, adventure and economic bootstrap pulling. What would Horatio Algiers do in this situation?

We found an impressive data visualization over at Portfolio.com, who compiled a list of the best markets for young adults. What’s so nice about the tool is that its interactivity allows users to better understand what information the Porftolio.com used in order to reach their decisions. They looked at annual population growth, employment growth, the percentage of young people that live in the city, the jobless rate for young people, the percentage of households that make more than $100,000 that are less than 45 years old and the percentage of young people who have their bachelor’s degrees.

This snappy INTERACTIVE data visualization was designed so very well because it takes a ton of boring information and makes it easy to access and desirable to use. Users see exactly how the final ranking was determined because all the information is readily displayed, which in turn allows users to focus on particular statistics that they feel are important. It’s just so good to see some nice data display design.

With graduation approaching we’ll continue to feature articles about the graduate’s dilemma. Hell, we may even have some contests for people who end up tripling and ochopling up in apartments.