College graduates entering uneasy job market

Thousands of students will be graduating from Wisconsin colleges over the next several weeks. Although the job market isn’t exactly prosperous, it could be getting better.
 
Graduating college can be an uneasy journey, especially with today’s tough job market. New graduates are competing for jobs with experienced workers.
 
Tim Tritch is the Associate Director of Career Services at UW-La Crosse. He says anecdotally, the job market seems to be picking up. More employers have been contacting his office about job openings than in recent years, “We don’t have a day that goes by, literally, without getting a call or e-mail from an employer saying, ‘Can you help us find people to fill this position.’ Some of those are local here in the La Crosse area, but also they’re coming from the Twin Cities, they’re coming from other parts of Wisconsin. That’s clearly an area where as the economy is picking up the demand is going to strip the supply.”
 
Tritch says the health care and IT fields continue to expand.
 
Dennis Winters is the Chief Labor Market Economist with Wisconsin’s Department of Workforce Development. He says hiring is picking up statewide. Winters says certain students will have an easier time finding work than others, “If you’ve got a degree in mechanical engineering for example, you’re probably in pretty good stead. But I know some folks who have undergrads in microbiology that are back in tech colleges that are getting other background in techniques to find places in the labs and such around.”
 
Winters says college graduates are more likely to find work than people who do not have degrees.