Frayed Prospects, Despite a Degree

But the end result was disheartening: Mr. Wells was told, he said, that company policy required him to have at least two years of experience in the field before he could be hired.

If Mr. Wells were a newly minted college graduate, he would not have had that problem. Ernst & Young recruits heavily on college campuses for entry-level positions, no experience required.

But Mr. Wells graduated in 2011, during one of the worst job markets in history, and his work record since then — like countless numbers of his peers — doesn’t measure up to what employers like Ernst & Young demand for “experienced” applicants.

Even as the jobs picture slowly improves, the disadvantage of bad timing follows those who graduated during the worst years. Applicants like Mr. Wells have neither the bright-eyed and bushy-tailed appeal of the class of 2013, nor the benefit of relevant work experience that might give them an edge.

“I’m competing against people that are graduating now,” said Mr. Wells, 27, who worked in construction and other jobs before starting college in 2007. “It’s easier to grab them up, because they’re fresh.”

His problems stem from the fact that companies typically divide their hiring into two pools: entry-level jobs, which are overwhelmingly filled by campus recruits, and experienced workers. Some allow recent graduates to stay in the first category for a year or two after getting their diploma. But recruiters say those applicants may find themselves at a disadvantage, especially if they have not been bolstering their résumés with classes, internships or volunteer work.

“If you’re a 2011 or a 2012 grad, the competition just got fierce — even more fierce — with the let-out of the 2013 class,” said Alexa Hamill, the United States campus recruiting leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers. “It’s like you’re in overtime, and they brought in the fresh team.”

The impact of this is difficult to measure because government statistics do not allow for a comparison of the fate of this year’s graduates with their immediate predecessors, instead lumping all college graduates under 25 into one group. And certainly college graduates as a whole are doing vastly better than those with only a high school degree (young college graduates have an unemployment rate of just over 8 percent, while the unemployment rate for high school graduates within the same age group is close to 20 percent).

But everything that is known about the job market points to the fact that Mr. Wells and his cohort are feeling the pinch. Many of the country’s largest companies make most of their entry level hires on campus, meaning there are no slots for the hapless person who had the misfortune of graduating in 2011. And historically, those who graduate during a recession earn far less than their peers who do not, and it can take a decade or more for them to catch up. Many have been forced to settle for lower-wage, lower-skill jobs, which has in turn helped increase joblessness among the high school graduates who previously held those jobs.

In 2000, about 60 percent of employed college graduates were working in jobs that required a degree, said Andrew Sum, director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. Now fewer than half are.

Campus recruiters at a variety of institutions said that those who graduated in 2013 have had a relatively easy time finding jobs, in part because the prolonged economic downturn has made them more focused on preparing themselves for the workplace. Alumni who graduated in the previous few years continue to trickle in, asking for help.

“The class of 2009 just got royally screwed, because their first four years in the labor market were this horrible thing,” said Heidi Shierholz, a labor specialist at the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning research organization in Washington. “This year’s first four years won’t be that bad.”