College payoffs

Many job seekers are hoping that 2005 will be a better year than 2004 for job employment. "The job unemployment rate is down to 5.2 percent, the lowest in more than three years. But a big reason is that the number of people who've simply given up looking for work is almost 20 percent higher than a year ago." Corporate cutbacks continute as the number of new jobs created steadily declines. "The broader economic outlook includes big government deficites, high fuel prices and brutal competition from low-wage locales like China and India, none of which is good for jobs in the U.S." Even with this, some sectors in the job market are doing well, such as accounting (up 2.4 percent from the previous year). The unemployment rate for middle managers are under 3 percent at its last count. Two-thirds of executives surveyed actually plan to increase hiring professional and managerial jobs. Some areas that are in high demand are auditing, corporate law, construction, and healthcare.
The article most lucrative college degrees stated that "Engineering and computer science graduates saw the biggest gains overall." Civil engineering graduates reported a 5.1 percent increase in the average starting salary; while starting pay for computer science graduates increased by 4.9 percent. Included in this list are business administration graduates with 2.6 percent increase, economics/finance graduates with 0.3, and marketing graduates with a 4 percent gain on entry-level pay. ("The NACE survey looks at starting pay in 70 disciplines at the bachelor's degree level only.")