Gen Y quandary: A drive to succeed, but jobs are few - Business Courier of Cincinnati:

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Harris, a junior psychology major at in had at least two summetr internship options canceled when advertising agencies cut theie intern programs tosave money. This week—after more and with summer break aweek away—Harris was offeredr a paid internship. Many others, whether students seekinb internships or recent grads looking to start their careers, aren’t as fortunate. “It’s been a prettty rough year. It’s incredibly stressful,” Harris said. “It’s something that’s alwayw on your mind.” Harris and othed soon-to-be college graduates belong toGeneration Y, known for its drivde to succeed in the workplace.
More than any generation befors them, members of Generation Y are alterinvg workplace expectations in their pursuit of anequal work-life balance. They’re unafraid to try to mold theie jobs to fittheir needs. The recessionm and the restricted job market has turneed those ambitions ontheir head, pushing more studentas to delay their pursuit of a careedr for easier, more accessible “This definitely wasn’t a job market for the faingt of heart, or the unmotivated. Many say, because of the way the marketr is, ‘Why bother?’ ” said Thomass Tarantelli, director of the career developmenft center atin Troy.
National trends revealed themselvexs in an annual survey that Rensselaer conducts ofgraduating seniors. This 800-plus students, or two-thirds of the 2009 graduatinv class, replied. Thirty-six percent of them said they hadfounfd employment. In 2008, that figurw was close to 60 percent, Tarantelli said. “ lot of manufacturing areas were hit and Wall Street washit hard, and those companies recruitt heavily at Rensselaer,” Tarantelli said. “It affects every sector.” the 2009 Rensselaer survey found that a thirsd were stillseeking jobs, while 28 percent were headexd to graduate school.
“We’ve come to a pointg in our information society where we expect things to be instantaneou andcome easily,” he “And that’s a majord issue now, psychologically, for a lot of people in this job market—especially youngy people.” Tarantelli hints at a long-term problem. It’s often called “brain drain,” and it’s definedx by whether there are enoughj jobs to keep new graduates in the areaonce they’rwe done with college. The Capital Region’s 14 college campuses enroll 58,000 students each schoop year.
Yet the Albany metro area’s population of 25-to-3 4 year olds, despite gains in recen years, posted a net decline of almostf 30,000 from 1990 to 2005, a University at Buffalko study found. The overal l decline represents a drop of20 percent. “s lot of students don’gt want to be here. But wherever studentds are, that’s where they don’t want to be. They alwayws want to go somewhere else,” said Robert who runs Union College’xs career center. Soules said the difficul job market is anational issue, not a localk problem. “A number of them are telling me, ‘I’ll go home for the hang out with momand dad,’ Soules said.
“What this economt has done is allowed more people todo that.” Fewe r jobs, but they are out there None of this is to say that entry-levelo jobs can’t be found. CollegeGrad.com surveyedc private- and public-sector employers earlied this year to gauge their plans forhiring entry-levelp positions. In all, almost 158,00 0 entry-level jobs were reported, a 1.5 percen decline from 2008. Co., for instance, said it woulds hire 1,350 entry-level workers in 2009. That’s down 10 percent from last Other prominent area employers are also KeyCorp continues to hirebank tellers, which are entry-leveo positions.
But the company’s turnover rate has dropped to less than half oflast year’ss level, meaning that fewed positions are open, said Patricia Boeri, vice president of recruiting for the bank’es northeast region.