Economists are speculating that the job market will not look promising for university graduates for the next couple of years. Thus, this is a time to travel, improve communication skills, join the Peace Corps or just stay in school and prolong graduation, economics Professor Ed Whitelaw said.
According to Whitelaw and Margaret Hallock of the Labor Education and Research Center, University students need to concentrate on perfecting their communication skills before they think about getting a job. Staying in school is one way to do just that, the two stressed at Monday’s Career Center-sponsored presentation titled “Crouching Economy, Hidden Career.”
The goal of the presentation was to educate students about the current economy, the impact the economy has on the Pacific Northwest and on gender issues, said Bill Bankhead of the University Career Center.
Hallock said jobs opening in the future will be in the services industry, where students seeking employment will need excellent communication skills.
“The ability to communicate with other humans is very important,” Hallock said. “If you have communication skills, talk your way into a situation where you can learn (technical) skills. If you have technical skills, learn the communications skills.”
If a person has a combination of the two, job opportunities will be endless in the next couple of years, the speakers said. According to Hallock, the service industry has exploded and will only continue to do so. Health, education, technical, business, leisure and public services are all areas where jobs will be found in the coming years and where communication skills are necessary, Hallock said.
“If you can finance it, stay in school. Refine your communication skills because they are golden in the workforce,” Whitelaw said. “Writing skills of undergraduates are not where they should be. Get someone to edit your work — beg for it if you have to.”
Some audience members expressed concern about the economic downturn the country has seen since March 2001 and what effects the Sept. 11 attacks will have on the economy.
Whitelaw said the differences would be “nearly impossible to tell by the year 2010.” But since the attacks, people might see a lower payoff from taxes because of the high costs of war, and people may see lower profits, Whitelaw said.
He added that the job market may also be affected, and the attacks could hasten the recession. However, he said, since the “downturn of jobs which started in March 2001, only a quarter of total jobs lost in the 1990-91 recession have been lost in the past six months,” so this is not a major recession.
“The underlying economic forces are probably largely unaffected,” Hallock said.
She said she is “upbeat about long-term aspects for women.”
“There are more women than men in college right now, and sexism is slowly being chipped away,” Hallock said. Though equality in pay is still an issue, she said, this is a “wonderful time for women.”
The talk helped University students Heather Soczek and Jimi Browne decide what they are going to do after graduation.
“I feel I learned a lot coming here. At first, I was coming for two extra-credit points for class, but I am very glad I came,” Browne said. “On the way over, I was thinking I was going to be making $100,000 after college, and it is not happening.”
Soczek did not have any idea what she was going to do after graduation and is now thinking about joining the Peace Corps.
“I have been thinking about joining the Peace Corps for a while now, and I am very glad (Whitelaw) brought it up today,” Soczek said.