GRADUATING INTO UNCERTAINTY
Financial fallout of the pandemic is putting the careers of post-secondary grads on pause
Students graduating from university this spring are being battered by cancelled practicums and internships, rescinded job offers and a labour market that is shedding jobs by the millions.
Vincelen Salvaloza saw the final practicum for her radio arts and entertainment program at BCIT vanish when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. The digital marketing job she had lined up to start after graduation has also been suspended indefinitely.
“People were looking forward to those practicums,” she said. “The feedback that the employers provide is considered in your grade, but it’s also like a letter of reference.”
Students are still honing their skills in the BCIT media lab, but they are supervised by their instructors rather than a private sector company.
Salvaloza’s summer job was supposed to start the week that social distancing came in, “but that’s on pause right now,” she said. “I’m in contact with my employer, but they are still figuring out ways to collaborate before I can actually begin.”
With time to burn, Salvaloza is trying to keep her momentum by producing YouTube videos.
“In this industry you can always start your own thing, so now I think of myself as a content creator,” she said.
UBC Sauder commerce grad Michelle Ng will start her career with Deloitte in August, if all goes according to plan. “A lot of my friends have seen their offers pushed back, but I haven’t heard anything yet,” she said.
Her plans to travel this summer are almost certainly scrubbed, so “I have a few months in front of me now, but it’s not like anyone is hiring.”
Deloitte is in the process of implementing an online virtual placement program for interns, the company said.
Students who were scheduled to join the company in May will start in June and those scheduled to start on or after June 1 will start as originally scheduled.
“With our offices across
Canada currently closed, we are still committed to providing a meaningful experience to this year’s cohort of summer students, and we are developing innovative ways for them to work with Deloitte,” said a company spokesperson.
Eric Jin Cheng landed a job in brand analysis and strategy in the middle of February, but the offer began to unravel as the COVID-19 crisis escalated.
“The original start date was supposed to be May 4 ... then it was postponed until June 1,” he said, adding that the internship is “no longer an option.”
He will instead spend the summer acquiring technical skills through summer school.
“I want to come out of this situation with the same amount of skills as if I had been working, if not more,” he said.
LINGERING EFFECTS
Graduating into a recession will have an immediate impact on your ability to secure a job in your field and to make the kind of money your colleagues earned in happier times.
Grads lucky enough to get a job during a recession year earn 10 to 15 per cent less on average than grads in better years, said University of Toronto professor Philip Oreopoulos. Top-paid positions tend to be fewer in number, if they exist at all
Students entering lower paid professions are hit the hardest and a great many grads are pushed down the ladder to even less lucrative jobs, he said.
Recession grads earn nine per cent less over the first five years of their careers and the wage gap is not fully extinguished for a decade, according to the study Graduating into a Recession, led by Oreopoulos.
Recession-year grads from the 1980s and ‘90s were calculated to have lost about five per cent of their lifetime earnings. But those figures are based on a typical recession scenario, with unemployment rates elevated by about five per cent.
I want to come out of this situation with the same amount of skills as if I had been working, if not more.” Eric Jin Cheng
The labour market shock sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic cost Canada one million jobs in March alone, the worst single-month drop ever recorded. We are in uncharted territory.
If past experience is a guide, graduates who are mobile and willing to change jobs frequently when new opportunities arise — even in a different industry — tend to recover from the wage deficit faster.
Money aside, that rough start will alter the entire life trajectory of many young workers in ways both good and bad, Oreopoulos said. Many will never work in their chosen field.
“What you end up doing because of this situation will change you in ways that you would not anticipate,” he said. “You are much more likely to change industries than if you had graduated in better times. Looking back, you might realize it was a good thing.”
TIME TO THINK
While new grads drum their fingers waiting for better times, they would be well served to consider their life objectives.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau recently announced a $9-billion aid package that would pay students and recent graduates $1,250 a month through August and create 76,000 summer jobs in addition to existing federal summer jobs programs.
Students who take volunteer jobs this summer can also access between $1,000 and $5,000 a month if they pursue “national service and serve their communities.”
Rather than entering a cruel job market, getting a one-or two-year master’s degree could have a significant long-term financial return, said Oreopoulos.
“If you can hunker down and keep yourself busy acquiring new skills while the labour market is recovering, you have a chance to enter a healthier job market down the road, with a better skill set,” he noted.
Volunteer jobs not only provide the kind of services that people really need, especially in disadvantaged communities, it’s an opportunity to experience empathy and consider your professional goals from a different perspective, he said.
“What matters is your longterm well-being, not necessarily how much you earn, and this pandemic presents real opportunities to gain experience and mature in ways you never could have otherwise imagined,” he said.
While this pandemic is unique in the challenges it presents for those post-secondary graduates, it’s not like young people haven’t faced recessions in the past.
In the early 1980s, summer jobs for students were almost impossible to find in B.C., and when I graduated in 1985, things had not significantly improved. The recession that struck late in 1981 was still causing wild economic mood swings and firms were slow to hire, especially young people.
An uncredentialed 22-yearold with a psych degree didn’t stand a chance.
It took a few years of juggling different jobs, from cooking pizza to building security, interspersed with some overseas travel, but eventually I would find a career calling — newspaper journalism — using skills that came very naturally to me: talking, telling stories and writing.
Within a year of volunteering as a cub reporter and layout editor at The Ubyssey, the student newspaper at my alma mater, I landed a paid gig in publishing and never ended up working a day in any job related to my degree in cognitive psychology.
DELAYS AND UNCERTAINTY
Three-decade-old lessons are of little solace to graduates looking at today’s tenuous economic landscape.
Matthew Yong has been locked down in his Singapore home for several weeks on an exchange program required to complete his UBC commerce degree.
“Obviously, I came at the wrong time and I’m pretty much locked down here,” he said. “But I didn’t want to come home (to Vancouver) because I really need to graduate and I can only really finish my courses here.”
He also worries that he might put his parents at risk if he travelled while Singapore is battling persistent outbreaks of COVID-19.
Yong is scheduled to start work at the international financial services firm KPMG in September in Vancouver. So far, no news is good news.
Many of his classmates have not been so lucky.
“I’ve already thought of some contingency plans and worst-case scenarios should I lose this offer or it were delayed,” he said. “I am already planning what my options are over the next few months.”
Travel is probably not going to be an option. Staying in school might be.
“I could get a master’s degree or stay home with family,” he said. “I’m really considering all options at this point.”
Yong anticipates that the work environment he will enter this fall may be quite different from that experienced by past cohorts of new grads.
“If my start isn’t delayed, I expect to work some of the time remotely, maybe all of it,” he said.
What matters is your long-term well-being, not necessarily how much you earn.”
Philip Oreopoulos