Maria Knox traveled halfway around the world from her native Bulgaria to earn degrees at Southern Adventist University and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.
But when she began looking for a job, the 29-year-old actuary found employment just a few hundred yards from her downtown home at BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee. Mrs. Knox was among the three dozen interns hired each year by Tennessee’s biggest health insurer and one who ultimately was hired for what she hopes is a longtime career at the Chattanooga company.
“This mixes my interest in both business and math and I think there is a lot of opportunity here,” the BlueCross actuarial analyst said.
Such opportunities for many recent college graduates have been rare. With unemployment at or near the highest levels in three decades across Tennessee and Georgia, employers are hiring fewer of those earning college diplomas this spring.
But for those like Mrs. Knox with math skills or those going to medically-related employers like those at BlueCross, job prospects have held up reasonably well.
“Graduates in nursing or pharmacy pretty much have their pick of jobs, and students who do well in most engineering and accounting fields are still finding jobs,” said Russ Coughenour, director of career services at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. “The real challenge this year is for graduates in other programs who are not at the top of their class or don’t have internships or other experience.”
Coming out of the worst economic and market slump in a generation, the U.S. economy has shown positive growth in output every quarter since last summer and the Dow Jones Industrial Averages is up by more than 70 percent from the low point reached in March 2009.
But while stocks and profits are rebounding, employment in metropolitan Chattanooga fell by 3,700 jobs, or 1.7 percent, from March 2009 to March 2010, according to data released last week by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Over the past three years, the 6-county Chattanooga area has shed 16,700 jobs, primarily in manufacturing, construction and financial services.
healthy job prospects
“Health care has been the one area that has continued to grow through this recession, but there have been some real structural changes through this economic downturn and many businesses are learning to adapt with fewer workers,” said Bill Fox, director for the Center for Business and Economic Research in Knoxville. “For college graduates in most other fields, it’s still a very tough job market.”
Many of Chattanooga’s biggest employers are hiring college graduates this spring, however. In the health care arena, there are hundreds of nursing and other medical specialist jobs posted at BlueCross, Erlanger Medical Center, Memorial Hospital and Cigna Healthcare.
“We’ve been very fortunate from a business perspective that we’ve been able to continue hiring at about the same rate as the previous year,” said Greg Gentry, human service manger at Erlanger, which now has just over 100 jobs openings. “This year we anticipate hiring between 50 and 70 college graduates.”
At Memorial Hospital, Recruitment and Retention Manager Cynthia C. Williams said the hospital continues to hire both nursing graduates.
“The market is competitive,” she said. “We begin establishing relationships with student nurses their freshman year. In doing so, some get an opportunity to work with us as Nurse Techs throughout their nursing program.”
powerful employer
The Tennessee Valley Authority, one of the largest employers in Chattanooga, is looking for graduating talent in the engineering, computer science, finance, accounting and economics, among other fields, TVA spokesman Jim Allen said. TVA attended job fairs this spring at 20 four-year schools across the Valley, including UTC.
Mr. Allen said TVA is also looking to fill at least 250 internships this summer.
Top jobs for college grads
* Nurses
* Pharmacists
* Accountants, actuaries
* Logistics
* Electrical and mechanical engineers
Source: University of Tennessee
Plans for building a wave of nuclear reactors could create a need for 12,000 to 21,000 new workers ranging from specially trained maintenance crews to nuclear physicists and engineers. The need for labor is compounded since more than a third of the country’s existing nuclear workers will be eligible for retirement in four years, according to the Southern Co., which is planning to build two new reactors at its Plant Vogtle near Waynesboro, Ga.
We’re putting together work force development pipelines,” said Andrew Bouldin, who helps coordinate recruiting for Southern Co.’s nuclear subsidiary.
Mr. Coughenour said employers are coming back to campus to gain more student contacts and future candidates.
“This time a year ago there was no energy in the market by employers,” he said. “There still isn’t as much hiring activity as we would like, but there are certainly more hopeful signs.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Continue reading by following these links to related stories:
Article: Degree in hand, but job still elusive
Joan Garrett has been a staff writer for the Times Free Press since August 2007. Before becoming a general assignment writer for the paper, she wrote about business, higher education and the court systems. She grew up the oldest of five sisters near Birmingham, Ala., and graduated with a master's and bachelor's degrees in journalism from the University of Alabama. Before landing her first full-time job as a reporter at the Times Free Press, she ...
Sunday, May 2, 2010 Jobs still in demand
By: Dave Flessner (Contact)
By: Joan Garrett (Contact)
Reply:
What are the differencs between US citizen college graduates and the foreign graduates graduating from US colleges? How about all of the thousands of legal immigrants and the many H1B visa workers allowed to come into this country while we are in this recession with high unemployment? Where are all of the private corporate investors for creating the private sector jobs? Wouldn't it be better to put Americans back to work instead of allowing the global corporations to do away with our citizens' jobs, instead of creating the circumstances which causes high unemployment? Apparently we have a situation that when the American citizens lose their job, there are not enough private jobs available to make it possible for everyone to have an instant replacement job available? There are people who do not like or understand why the government is spending our tax payer money and borrowed money to stabilize this recession. Then why aren't all these people who do not like "big government," "raising hell" about what the private sectors are not doing to help in the recovery of our jobs and correcting the global corporate world policies for reinvesting back into the US, helping to create jobs? In conjunction with this, what did the US consumers and the private (global) corporations do to cause the loss of our jobs here in the US? The US still has a high trade deficit along with this high unemployment. When the US consumers spend money on the imported goods of the Global corporate monopolies, does it help to recover our manufacturing base and jobs, here in the US? Many of the anti Obama people are blaming him for not correcting everything that is "wrong" during the short time he has been in office and with spending too much money. What are the "tea baggers doing to help us out of this recession? It is my opinion, that until the private sectors start putting some money into the pot for creating more productive manufacturing jobs here in the USA, there is not enough sustainable government money to get these needed changes over the period needed. If there are jobs created for manufacturing goods to provide the US consumers the choices to buy competitive goods made here in the USA instead of buying the same imported goods which are now supplied by the global corporations.
If the people are not willing to stop buying imported goods, then the effects of the global economy will continue taking it's toll in dragging this country down.
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