Young & Jobless

ANDY SNOW/JONATHAN SAUNDERS/TED THAI FOR TIME
Sowma, Laconte, and Serrant struggle with post-gradution options

(2 of 2)

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, coupled with an uninviting economy, have inspired many job seekers to opt for altruistic alternatives which also happen to look good on a resume. AmeriCorps has seen a 75% increase in college graduates who want to participate in its yearlong community-service program. Applications are up 18% at the Peace Corps and have tripled at Teach for America. Some 14% of graduates from Spelman College in Atlanta applied for the teaching program, as did 7% from Yale. Jason Merker, 22, a business major who graduated with highest honors from Emory University, stopped interviewing for finance jobs after he saw Teach for America's brochure in November. "I didn't love all the job opportunities that were available, and this just felt right," says Merker, who this fall will start teaching elementary school in Washington. "And the skills are extremely transferable, whether I'm coming up with different ways to teach kids how to read or coming up with different solutions for a consulting client."

Marketing major Jonathan Mackey, who graduated in December from Butler University in Indianapolis, Ind., tried to compete for jobs against experienced sales professionals and M.B.A.s, and is now awaiting medical clearance for the Peace Corps. "My friends aren't doing a whole lot better," he says. "It's a relief to know it's not just me."

Many college seniors have decided to ride out the uncertain economy by staying in school longer than they had planned. Scores of honors graduates at Lehigh University, in Bethlehem, Pa., are taking the school's offer of a fifth year of tuition-free classes. Elsewhere, thousands of college students have to shell out big bucks to go to grad school. The number of students who took the Graduate Record Examinations, a requirement for many graduate programs, jumped 18% this year. But the glut of applicants has driven down acceptance rates, which at the University of Buffalo Law School, for example, have dropped to 30%, from 60% three years ago.

And at the end of the hiring queue, behind the horde of anxious college grads, are the high school students who lack either the money or the grades or the inclination for higher education. Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum points out that 1 in 10 teenagers lost a job during the recession. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is trying to cut funding for federal job-training programs for young adults, even though independent studies have shown that for every dollar spent on programs for disadvantaged youth like Job Corps, society saves about $2 from increased productivity and lower costs related to crime and welfare. Jessica Collins, 21, had been making $6.50 an hour at McDonald's when, she says, she started selling drugs to make more money. Then an addict tried to trade her his daughter for a bag of cocaine, and Collins was shocked into going straight. She enrolled in a yearlong Job Corps program in Edinburgh, Ind., in which she learned to operate heavy equipment. Last week she started an apprenticeship that pays $15 an hour. "Job Corps saved my life," she says.

Alex Sowma, 18, is looking for money-making ventures, possibly in real estate, but for now works at a pizza-delivery call center in Cincinnati, Ohio. He has no plans for college. "At the end of four years, I don't want to owe an institution upwards of $50,000 and not have a guaranteed job," he says.

Grace Anderson-Smith, 22, is seeing his point. After graduating with a B.A. in economics from Wesleyan in May 2001, she has yet to find permanent work but is holding out hope that she won't have to settle for a dead-end job. She is still campaigning hard for something in marketing but is open to other options. "I've done everything you're supposed to do," she says. "I went to a good school, got good grades, played a sport, did a four-year internship and have been networking like crazy." After sending out more than 100 resumes and going on dozens of interviews, she has started giving resumes to people she meets at nightclubs and in coffee shops. When she spoke with TIME, this never-say-die job seeker asked if we could print her e-mail address in case potential employers read this article. Desperate times call for desperate measures, so if anyone out there has a job for Anderson-Smith or any of the others in this story, e-mail them at timejobsearch@aol.com .