With tens of millions of people newly unemployed, the class of 2020 has stepped into one of the worst job markets in history. As of May 2020, the number of open jobs on Glassdoor that contain “entry level” or “new grad” in the job title has dropped 68% from this time last year. Now, confronting this significant drop in the number of open jobs, new grads are commencing their job searches in a profoundly different economic environment than could have been imagined a few months ago.
Where do new grads want to work? Using U.S.-based Glassdoor jobs and salary data, we show where new college grads in the United States are applying in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and economic crisis.
What We Did
For this analysis, we used a large sample of real-world job applications started on Glassdoor between May 1, 2020, and May 31, 2020, by users likely to be recent college graduates. We define new graduates as those with a bachelor’s degree born in 1994 or later (aged 26 or younger). We then used these data to show which employers, metros, and occupations new graduate job seekers are applying to most frequently in the U.S. during the COVID-19 crisis. Similarly, to estimate pay for new grads, we examined anonymous Glassdoor salary reports left between May 1, 2019, and April 30, 2020, by U.S.-based employees aged 26 or younger with a bachelor’s degree.
