Is it me, or is the KC job market CRAP?

[KCMax]

I must be doing something wrong if there are so many jobs available. 

My sister graduated in May with a business degree and finally found a job - as a waitress. She's still looking for a long-term job, but its been really frustrating for her.

[Maitre D]

My sister graduated in May with a business degree and finally found a job - as a waitress. She's still looking for a long-term job, but its been really frustrating for her.

20% of the jobs created in the USA last year (when the country was creating jobs - now it's not, as you know) went to waitressing & bartending.


Nice ick-onomy.

[WyCo]

Sometimes the best route is working with a Temp Agency.  Quite a few of those jobs end up being permanent.

[kcmetro]

My sister graduated in May with a business degree and finally found a job - as a waitress. She's still looking for a long-term job, but its been really frustrating for her.

I graduated last May with a masters degree and I'm sitting at home right now, unemployed, posting on a message board. 

[coreyo]

What if you don't hold a degree in any of those fields though? 

Do you think every single person at a big 4 accounting firm has a CPA and accounting degree?
Do you think every single person at Cerner has computer science degree?

You're obviously not going to be hired at a big 4 firm to do corporate taxes if you don't have the degree to do it, but they hire all sorts of majors. 

Larger companies are more likely to train you in what you would do, so they hire a larger variety of degrees.

[lock+load]

Do you think every single person at a big 4 accounting firm has a CPA and accounting degree?
Do you think every single person at Cerner has computer science degree?

You're obviously not going to be hired at a big 4 firm to do corporate taxes if you don't have the degree to do it, but they hire all sorts of majors. 

Larger companies are more likely to train you in what you would do, so they hire a larger variety of degrees.

Big 4 firms pretty much only hire accounting grads elegible to sit for the CPA exam. 

[pstokely]

I graduated last May with a masters degree and I'm sitting at home right now, unemployed, posting on a message board. 

A masters in what, unemployment?

[aknowledgeableperson]

Big 4 firms pretty much only hire accounting grads elegible to sit for the CPA exam. 

Its been a long time since I have worked with CPA firms.  Yes, if you are on the audit side they want CPA candidates.  But those firms also do a lot of consultant work and those positions do not require a major background in accounting.

Maybe things have changed over the years.

[KCK]

I had a very hard time finding a job after I graduated from college a few years ago. In fact I even talked about it in the thread

I was fortunate enough to find a really good job in my field of study(telecommunications) at AT&T. It took a long time and a lot of persistence though.

To those still in the job searching process, don't give up, good jobs are out there.

[Highlander]

I graduated last May with a masters degree and I'm sitting at home right now, unemployed, posting on a message board. 

WHat's your masters degree in?

[KCMax]

I had friends in law school that took well over a year before finding a legal job.

[KCPowercat]

what kind of a job are you looking for metro?  those of us might have positions in those fields available.

[kcmetro]

I actually have a job lined up as we speak, but thanks. I wasn't looking very hard though to begin with. I could've found a job in another state pretty easily, but I wanted to stay in this area. My degree was in urban planning.

[KCPowercat]

yeah there are definitely people on this site that could have hooked you up.

[Tosspot]

Pardon me bumping this. It seems timely.

Four years later from the OP -- how are things out there for you?

[ignatius]

Here are the stats according to the Feds.  The more I understand their methodology, the less I trust actual numbers, but the _trends_ might have some merit.

http://www.bls.gov/eag/eag.mo_kansascity_msa.htm

They claim..
- KC jobs down 0.9% in Nov compared to previous year
- But this is slightly better than StL, Minneapolis, San Fran, San Diego, Portland all at -1.2% loss, which seems to be US avg.  Denver (-0.1%) and Indy (-.3%) doing better than US average too.
- Biggest KC losses are in Construction (-7.3%) and Manufacturing (-4.5%) but white collar jobs are down too.
- KC jobs gains are in Government, Education/Health and Leisure

While not great for KC, it's worse in many other cities.  Florida cities are down well over 2%.  Texas as usual seems to be in kickass mode with jobs.

[grovester]

the usual result is we don't get the big boom or the big bust, these numbers seem to reinforce that for now

[kcmetro]

Surprised nobody is talking about this.

http://sprintconnection.kansascity.com/?q=node/937

[ignatius]

This one could be a big hit to KC.  But they laid off 5,000 early last year and the impact wasn't as much as expected to the KC economy.  When Sprint lays off, some (many?) of those jobs become outsourced instead of on payroll.  So technically it's a lay off, but the job is still there.  Don't know if that's what it will mean this time though.

[ignatius]

Here are the KC telcom jobs in thousands from Nov 1998 to Nov 2008.  Note that despite layoffs every year from Sprint lately, the job count actually increased a bit in the last 3 years.  It's probably because they outsource the jobs and reduce internal employee payroll.

1998 28.1
1999 28.9
2000 31.5
2001 29.9
2002 29
2003 26.9
2004 24.1
2005 21
2006 22.6
2007 23.2
2008 23.0

http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/outside.jsp?survey=sm