Part 3: Michigan State University 51st Annual Recruiting Trends Survey & Report: Hiring For Full-Time Positions, Employment Opportunities for Class of 2021-2022, and Industry Sector

This is the third of six articles in this series, click here to go to the first article. If you’re searching for a remote internship, go to our search results page that lists all of the remote internships and other entry-level jobs advertised on College Recruiter and then drill down as you wish by adding your desired category, location, company, or job type.

HIRING FOR FULL-TIME POSITIONS: COLLEGE RECRUITING 2021-2022

The college labor market after experiencing years of solid, if not spectacular, growth stalled at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. More than one-quarter of employers usually committed to seeking new college talent opted to sit out the recruiting period for 2020-21 graduates. Those employers who remained active chose to either cut back slightly on their hiring plans or maintain hiring at the previous year’s level. Figure 3 presents the year-to-year change for the bachelor’s labor market to illustrate the story for this historical period of job growth. The COVID situation saw overall bachelor hiring fall slightly into a decline from the previous year though statistically the change represented no change from the previous year. So employers remained active, monitoring the COVID situation and adjusting their hiring as they obtained more information on the pandemics progress. This year all the signals suggest that the college labor market will be more robust with potentially higher number of opportunities than last year.

Employment opportunities for class of 2021-2022. The number of employers able to provide hiring information continues to be markedly lower than previous years. Even among those who reported definite plans to hire college talent this year and despite the drop in the number still undecided as recruiting began this fall, many employers hedged on providing their hiring information. Several employers provided thoughtful insights that suggested employers were closely monitoring the progress of the COVID Delta variant and providing time for their employees to receive the COVID vaccinations before committing to the actual numbers they expect to hire. Employers expected additional clarity in early January. Some also admitted that they could not release hiring information at this time, due to organizational policy. The largest employers were more likely to omit data this year – a change from previous years. Nearly all those who hesitated to provide numbers, however, expressed their eagerness to hire college talent and would be aggressively recruiting during the fall.

The lower number providing complete hiring information, approximately 750, presents challenges in analyzing and interpreting the results. With a small number, it becomes harder to stabilize the standard deviation when a few employers make large swings in their hiring. In examining different categories of employers, whether by size or industry sector, low responses means that some groups results cannot be determined. Finally, lower response numbers makes it risky to generalize beyond the employers included in this study. Readers need to use this information in conjunction with other available data sources (for example, state and national job reports) to confirm what may be the hiring situation for their graduates.

Hiring by organizational size. Smaller organizations have contributed consistently to the strong performance of the college labor market over the past ten years. This year is no exception. Small organizations indicate they will hire approximately 10% more graduates, focusing on associates and bachelor’s degree talent. Larger companies (those with more than 500 employees) will focus primarily on bachelor’s candidates, pushing hiring at this level upward 20% compared to last year. Several of these companies commented that they either stopped hiring last year or failed to hire the numbers need, so they are playing catch-up this fall. Hiring at the MBA and masters (all non-MBA programs) is comparable to last year with larger companies indicating little expansion in job opportunities.

The largest organizations with more than 4,000 employees focus on associate degree candidates (up 7%) with a strong emphasis at the bachelor’s degree (up 26%). Employers in this group expect to hold hiring steady at MBA and lower expectations slightly at the master’s levels.

Hiring by economic sector (segment). Using NAIC codes, 19 major industry groups comprise for this report. All 19 provided information useful in this report. Unfortunately, upon compilation of the results, several industry groups failed to provide sufficient hiring information for inclusion in this section of the report. Sectors not included in the tables below include Oil & Gas, Utilities, Wholesale Trade, Information Services, Leasing Services, Arts & Entertainment, Accommodations (Hospitality), and Administrative Services.

Information provided by the remaining sectors for total hires, associate’s and bachelor’s degree levels offer the best industry-based measures for this labor market study. However, within some sectors the number of responses for one or both of these degree levels is still low. Readers please carefully consider the low number of responses when extending the expected hiring targets beyond this study.

All the industry sectors indicate positive hiring for bachelor degree candidates. Only Education Services expects to lower hiring for associate degree candidates with Manufacturing unchanged from last year. The situation at the master’s and MBA levels appear mixed. MBA hiring outlook improves for all sectors except Manufacturing and Health Services with no expected change for Professional, Business and Scientific Services. Master’s hiring is down slightly for Manufacturing and Education Services and sharply for Health Services.

Due to data limitations, we provide insights to the subsector in only several major industry sectors. Using information for bachelor degree, hiring goals in selected subsectors can provide some additional insights.

• Manufacturing. The auto, aerospace, truck subsector reports hiring will be solid though it will be slightly lower than last year (-2%). The only other sector trending downward is Petroleum & Chemicals. Strength in manufacturing sector centers on Computer & Electronics (up 32%), Food & Beverage (up 13%), and Primary, Fabricated Metals (up 9%). Textile & Paper and other manufacturing organizations not classified expect to increase hiring slightly while surgical equipment subsector’s hiring will remain the same as last year.
• Professional, Business and Scientifics Services. Strong hiring growth is expected in accounting (CPA firms) which will be up 19% from last year; Computer Services & Software up 21%; Scientific Research (all types) up 22%. Advertising, PR & Marketing firms, Management operations (such as supply chain) expect hiring to continue at last year’s pace with only engineering services reporting a slight decline in the number that will be hired this year compared to 2020-21.
• Education services. Hiring at K-12 schools expects to increase by 21% while college and universities (non-faculty) and education support services will decline slightly.
• Health Services: Only laboratory services reports a slightly decline in hiring while ambulatory services (up 25%), hospitals (up 21%) and social assistance agencies (up 24%) are increasing hiring. Most of this hiring occurs at the associates and bachelors levels.

Industry sector hiring intentions differ by degree level. The following tables present the outlooks for the associates, bachelors, MBA and master’s degree levels. Sectors not included in the tables failed to meet the criteria we use for including information.

PLEASE BE CAUTIOUS IN INTERPRETING THE REPORTED CHANGES. THEY REFLECT ONLY A SMALL PORTION OF EACH SECTOR AND ARE NOT GENERALIZABLE. REMEMBER SMALL NUMBERS PRODUCE LARGE PERCENTAGE CHANGES THAT MAY OVERSTATE THE HIRING OUTLOOK FOR THAT DEGREE.

— This is the third of six articles in this series. Click here to go to the next article. This series of articles is courtesy of Dr. Phil Gardner, Ph.D. Michigan State University Collegiate Employment Research Institute. To download the full report, go to https://ceri.msu.edu/_assets/pdfs/Recruiting%20Trends%202021-22/Recruiting-Trends-Report-2021-22.pdf