In spite of the slight economic slowdown in recent months, the job
market for new college graduates continues to thrive. In a recent
survey—the NACE
Job Outlook 2008 survey—employers said they
plan to hire 16 percent more new college graduates in 2007-08 than
they did in 2006-07. Signing bonuses are up, on average by 25 percent,
and salaries to new college graduates are expected to rise.
Nearly
eight out of 10 employers said they plan to increase salaries to
bachelor’s degree graduates. The first-quarter issue of Salary
Survey, a quarterly survey of starting salary offers to new
college graduates, provides an early confirmation of that estimate.
Although these early data are limited, the overall average starting
salary offer for Winter 2008 ($49,300) is 4 percent greater than the
average salary offer in Winter 2007 ($47,414). Of course, this overall
average masks some significant variations among different academic
disciplines and among various majors within those disciplines.
Business degrees: Salaries are up in all the
business disciplines that reported a percentage change over last year,
although the overall average increase among all business majors is
only 2.6 percent.
Accounting $47,413
Business Administration/Management $43,823
Finance $48,795
Marketing $43,459
Technical degrees: Increases for technical degree
candidates can be described as robust.
Computer Science: $56,921
Engineers $56,336
Chemical Engineering $63,749
Civil Engineering $49,427
Electrical Engineering $56,512
Mechanical Engineering $56,429
Liberal Arts degrees:
Salary offers to liberal arts majors, as a group, started the year
at a 1.1 percent decrease over 2006. They made their way back,
however, posting increases of 1.2 percent in the Spring 2007 report,
3.5 percent in the Summer 2007 report, and 4.6 percent in the Fall
2007 report, ending on a positive note.
Liberal arts graduates, as a group, start the year on a high note
with a 9 percent increase to their average salary offer, raising it to
$33,258. Due to limited data at this time on these grads, we are
unable to examine individual majors; however NACE will continue to
track the average salary offers for these graduates as the year
progresses.
Early indicators (results from Job Outlook 2008 and
Winter 2008 Salary Survey) both point to another strong year for
college recruiting. However, keep in mind that the data presented
herein are limited. Look for more information in Job Outlook 2008
Spring Update survey, which will be released in early April, and
Salary Survey – Spring 2008, which will also be published in
April.
