It’s that time of the year again! College grads are hitting the workforce, and their prospects look better than the rest of the population’s.

According to a recent article on ere.net (a helpful source of recruiting news), the National Association of Colleges and Employers’ Hiring Index reports a recent jump in both recruiting and hiring of college students.

The article also states that these bumps counteract a recent downward trend.  Below are a few more details from the article:

• The outlook for college hiring in 2011 was 13.5 percent higher than the outlook in 2010.
• Nearly 50 percent of companies surveyed expected to increase the number of college hires – up from 16.9 percent the year before!
• Alas, 40 percent of companies planned to decrease their college hires and 10 percent thought that their college hiring levels wouldn’t change. The silver lining in such numbers: they’re not planning on laying off recent college hires.

Our nation has never really experienced long-term unemployment for significant numbers of recent college graduates, and we certainly don’t want to start now. A look at post-communist countries and the modern Middle East shows us that high unemployment among well-educated twenty- and thirty-somethings drags down an entire society. Getting young people into the workforce directs their energy to the greater good and away from civilization-destroying activities and overdependence on government

If you have stories about your company’s college recruiting strategies, please post a comment below. When the National Association of College and Employer’s next index come out, I’ll include it in my reflections.

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