Finding a full time job in today’s market is a full time job

December 26, 2009 – 2:18 pm – No Comment

After spending months looking for a job, I finally found something working as a sales associate at a local department store. I’m making $10 an hour and averaging 30-35 hours a week. With an hourly rate like that I’ll barely be able to make my car payment and student loan payment, but at least I’ll be able to make them.

It’s a difficult market to find work in when 80% of the graduating class of 2009 weren’t offered jobs upon graduation and with many of us still out there looking for work.

It really is a full time job to try to find something; in my case it turned from a search for a dream job to a search for a job where I could earn something. Employers really do have the upper hand in this market, they know that they can offer you less money and that you’ll be willing to accept it only because work is so hard to come by.

I recently found a website that said those who graduated with a degree in business administration (just undergraduate) are earning an average of $42,000 a year. I’m getting no where near that number. After taxes, I’m lucky if I’ll be earning $12,000. As much as I want the sales experience so I may be able to get a job somewhere else in the future, I don’t know if this is something that I really see myself doing. The truth is, I really wanted to be making at least $20,000 a year while I lived in my current house and I honestly find the pay of $12,000 a year a bit insulting for all the work I put into college. Yesterday while I was sitting in the break area watching the training videos someone asked me why would I even consider working at that store when I had graduated college and had a business administration degree. I could only say, “because I can’t find a job anywhere else.”