Catherwood LibraryILR School

1.6 million men and women are set to graduate with their United States bachelor's degrees in the next few weeks, and they will enter a job market with a 9.9% jobless rate. What to do about the job-hungry graduates has been discussed extensively by President Obama and White House officials, but the consensus has been that the best thing to do is to continue to focus on overall unemployment and to continue or improve support for higher education. While this is probably the best long-term strategy recent and soon-to-be college graduates could suffer for years to come from the 'scramble for jobs' and the depression of new earnings. The average salary offered to bachelor's degree graduates this year is just about $47,000, a 1.7% decrease from just last year, which was also thought of as a bad year. The plight of the graduates may also hurt Democrats in the upcoming primaries.