It is hard to find a job during a recession. As we all know by now, recessions bring nothing except high unemployment rates and leave people worse off than they were before.

Nobody wants to be in the position of not being employed for a period of time, especially college graduates who end up graduating at the time of a recession.

During a recession, some might tell college graduates to maybe hold off on finding a job right away and maybe pursue other things that can help them in the future like attending graduate school after earning a bachelor’s degree.

For example, people who graduated during the last recession of 2008-2009 might tell you that they held off on finding a job after graduating because it was hard for everyone else to find a job at that time.

Since we are currently experiencing a recession given the COVID-19 pandemic, I think that this recession is different from past recessions and upcoming college graduates may not need to hold off on finding a job right away.

When recessions hit our economy, you always hear about people losing their jobs and people who can’t seem to find a job. According to the Federal Reserve Economic Data, the unemployment rate among college graduates between the ages of 20 and 24 in March of 2020 was 4.2%.

Once businesses started to close down for a brief period of time, that number soared to 20.4% in June 2020. If this number remained consistent for a couple of months, recent college graduates might want to consider their options and maybe choose a different path than to join the labor force right away.

However, this does not seem to be the case in this current recession.

Over the next couple of months, since the unemployment rate among college graduates between the ages of 20 and 24 reached an all-time high in June, that number quickly began to drop. In July, it dropped to 17.6%. Then it dropped even lower to 13% in August.

In September, that same unemployment rate dropped to 9.9%. Finally, in the month of October, the rate dropped to 7.9%, which one could say is starting to creep towards the average over the past couple of years.

With that being said, I believe that college students who plan on graduating in December of 2020 or May of 2021 shouldn’t worry about delaying joining the labor force. This recession is different from past recessions because the unemployment rate among college graduates has fallen dramatically in just a couple of months.

Whereas in previous recessions, the high unemployment rate remained relatively consistent or fluctuated rapidly during the months of the recession.

College students between the ages of 20 and 24 should not hesitate to join the labor force after graduation, because this recession is different in nature than in the past and they should find it relatively easy to obtain a job in the next couple of months, given the steady decline of the unemployment rate.