In the next few weeks, hundreds of Flathead Valley high school and college students will graduate. When the confetti is swept up, cake has gone stale and accolades have worn off, many of those wide-eyed former students will wonder what’s next.
It’s certainly an inopportune time to be looking for a job. These students are aware of that. The media (you’re welcome) continues to remind them. We point out that, instead of just competing for work with your peers, you may be competing with your parents.
The unemployment rate in the Flathead Valley is, as of this writing, above 12 percent. So, if you’re not planning on continuing your education and hope to land work immediately, the competition will be fierce. A downtown Kalispell business owner recently posted a job for barista and received 40 applications – the professional field is worse.
There is other evidence of this being the most brutal job market in some 25 years. And outside Northwest Montana, things aren’t much better, with a nationwide unemployment hovering around 9 percent. It’s enough to rain on anyone’s graduation parade. But it shouldn’t.
In the long haul, the class of 2009 will at once be patient and driven, all while having to sequester its ego and sense of entitlement. Following the dot.com burst, in what was a mini-recession in the early 2000s, for summer work I sheepishly took an unpaid internship and supplemented my income by risking my life installing signs. Oh, and I lived at home.
My second “professional” job required a move to Bismarck, N.D. to cover the Legislature at the state capitol. It was a friendless, hapless existence in which I was ill-suited for the environment. The winter wind blew so cold and so hard that my ear lobes would swell when I stepped outside. But that job paid, and I actually could afford to rent my own small apartment and buy a fish tank to go with it. Yes, I know, it’s far worse now than it was five or six years ago.
But the advice that was given to me then, that I will pass on to you, graduating class of 2009, is take what you can get. Your first job after earning a degree may well be the worst job you ever have. It’s not supposed to work that way, but in this market, especially if you want to stay in Montana, you should adhere to that mentality.
And there are a few positive indicators for those high school and college graduates who want to stay in the valley and for those hoping to move here, that things may be turning a corner. A gun manufacturer just announced a major expansion in Kalispell and there are whispers that two other significant employers may be relocating here. With those new businesses come opportunity for other businesses, and each one provides a much-needed job base outside of tourism and logging.
That’s not to mask the reality that many of you graduates will face. The majority of you will likely scrape by this summer, if not move away all together – although it appears to be rough going everywhere. But by the end of 2009, many economists predict that firms across several sectors will begin hiring as the economy again begins to grow. That’s not a sure thing, but it’s better to be optimistic than wallow over the fact that you have to mop floors while you wait to take the world by storm.
Congratulations, graduates. Now, go out there and answer your cynics.