St. Thomas post-graduation job rates remain relatively high amid the COVID-19 pandemic, stating that 97% of St. Thomas graduates are employed or continuing education post-undergraduate degree, according to the university’s Career Development team, compared to the U.S. average 86% that the National Center for Education Statistics reports.

Mark Soreson-Wagner, director of career development at St. Thomas, explained what a positive outcome looks like for graduating seniors at St. Thomas.

“Ninety-six point five percent of St. Thomas students had a positive career outcome within six months of graduation,” Soreson-Wagner said. “What we mean by positive career outcome is that they’re employed, whether it’s full time or part time, in the military, or they’re in some kind of service or volunteer role like AmeriCorps, Peace Corps or they’re enrolled in some kind of continuing education.”

In the beginning stages of the pandemic in April 2020, the unemployment rate reached 14.8%, the highest it has been since unemployment data collection began in 1948. Workers with less than a high school diploma peaked in unemployment rates at 21% in April 2020. According to a June 2021 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, the unemployment rate for those with at least a bachelor’s degree was 6.2%. Those without a degree peaked at 9.6%.

Unlike the job trends of the Great Recession in 2008, the Pew Research Center found that, “69% of adults ages 20 to 29 who had graduated from college with a bachelor’s degree or higher during the previous spring were employed, lower than the share of 2019 graduates who were employed in October of that year (78%).”

Now, two years into the pandemic, job rates are starting to look differently than they did during the start of COVID-19. Soreson-Wagner has positive hopes for the graduating seniors.

“(The National Association of Colleges and Employers) said they expected hiring to go up 31.6% over the class of 2021,” Soreson-Wagner said. “We had some really strong outcomes for our students, and so we expect it to look the same.

“That’s a big number for any university, and so I’m always nervous just to make sure our students have great opportunities, but based on the feedback we’re getting from employers, it’s looking really strong out there.”

Because of the pandemic, many job fairs, interviews and even internships have turned to virtual platforms like Zoom and Microsoft Teams as ways for employers and employees to stay connected and hold that work environment.

Luckily, being located in a metro area with more than 3.5 million people is beneficial to St. Thomas students and still maintains most of its career opportunities despite the pandemic.

“(St. Thomas) recognizes that the Twin Cities area is a really diverse set of industries,” Sorenson-Wagner said. “If you look at some other cities, they might be really highly focused on financial or manufacturing or health care. The Twin Cities are really diverse, and we have a lot of those things.

“Even when something like the pandemic hits, you see that yes, maybe one or two of those industries are negatively impacted, but some of them are also positively impacted as well. We have that diversity here, which really helps kind of even out the opportunities for students when they graduate.”

St. Thomas offers virtual job fairs and events through Handshake and has Career Development services that allow students to book free appointments with career professionals that focus on preparing students for job interviews, searching for internships, reviewing resume material and more.

“We’re doing everything we can to provide opportunities for students to connect with employers,” Soreson-Wagner said.“A few weeks ago, we did Career Tracks, so we took students in buses to go visit a couple of local employers.

“We also did a virtual visit with a company in Chicago, and so we’re trying an office to make sure students have access to visit companies, to see different types of companies, not just large Fortune 500s but diverse sets of companies so they can find a place that’s going to make sense for them.”

Despite the pandemic, St. Thomas has kept up its post-graduation job rates. The virtual services allowed for students to continue to thrive outside of St. Thomas and seek positive post-graduation plans.

“We’re still getting a lot of interest from companies approaching us saying ‘how do we connect with students who are two weeks away from graduation?’” Soreson-Wagner said. “We know that there’s some good opportunities out there, it’s just making sure students know how to access them.”

Macy Berendsen can be reached at macy.berendsen@stthomas.edu.