Hey grads shunning government work ... looked at the private sector lately?
FCW's resident cartoonist urges young professionals to take a more realistic view than some recent data suggests they do.
We are commencing another graduation season. And as a new generation of 20-somethings hits the job market not the least of their concerns is "what job market?" That's why I was surprised by a couple of recent FCW articles describing college grads' lack of interest in government work. (Especially this one and this one.)
While I am the first to understand the lure of a six-figure salary and a penthouse apartment in a hip urban center, I am also the first to say "have these people been paying attention?" These things don't exist anymore. (I'm not sure they ever did, other than on sitcoms.) Heck, even some unpaid internships don't work out.
Are these new members of the work force uninterested in government work because they have a better employment solution? (And, to clarify, this is not to extoll the benefits of government employment. This is to extoll the benefits of any port in a storm.) Or, as one reader put it, “Isn't it a surprise that young people consider the federal government the employer of last resort, when the civil service has become the whipping boy of the administration and Congress?”
