The Class of 2015 Isn’t Ready to Join the Workforce

The Class of 2015 Isn’t Ready to Join the Workforce

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By Beth Braverman

The improving economy means that more employers are offering decent jobs to the Class of 2015, but many of those new graduates don’t feel ready to join the working world.

Only 35 percent of students believe that college was effective in preparing them for a job, and even fewer — 20 percent — feel very prepared to enter the workforce, according to the 2015 Workforce Readiness Survey by McGraw Hill Education.

More than half of students surveyed said they never learned to write a resume in college or how to conduct themselves in a job interview. Nearly 60 percent said they didn’t know how to network or search for a job.

Related: Why the Class of 2015 May Actually Get Good Jobs

The job market has loosened up this year — employers expect to hire nearly 10 percent more new college graduates this year than last year, according ot a study released last month by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Still, the best gigs remain very competitive, and students who don’t know how to navigate the job search process may find themselves at a disadvantage. 

Two-thirds of those surveyed said that they wanted to get more internships or professional experience while in school, and about 60 percent wanted more time to focus on career prep.

Colleges regularly tout their career services departments, but the students surveyed for this report gave those offices poor marks. Only a third thought that their school’s career services department was effective, and a quarter had never used career services.

Those Record Job Openings Weren’t All for Burger Flippers

FILE PHOTO: Job seekers stand in a room of prospective employers at a career fair in New York City, October 24, 2012.   REUTERS/Mike Segar
Mike Segar
By Millie Dent

Not only did job openings increase to 5.4 million in April, the highest number from the Labor department in 15 years, but the quality of the jobs was impressive, too. The openings included positions in finance (+13,000) and in architectural and engineering services (+5,000).

Overall, service-sector job growth outpaced gains made last year. The majority of jobs were in professional business services (+63,000), leisure and hospitality (+57,000) and health care (+47,000). Employment in retail also edged up (+32,000), as well as in construction (+17,000). The biggest increase in vacancies was in the West, but businesses across the nation are looking for new hires.

Related: 10 Best Cities for Job Seekers

Mining, logging and oil and gas drilling all posted decreases. Employment in those industries increased by 41,000 in 2014, but the striking decline in prices for oil and other commodities has taken a toll, with employment dropping by 68,000 thus far.

In another reassuring sign, unemployment has fallen to 5.5% from 6.3% at this time last year.

Cyberattacks on Washington Are Up 50 to 100 Percent

REUTERS/Kacper Pempel/Files
By Brianna Ehley, The Fiscal Times

As the government struggles to hire skilled workers to fend off hackers, cyberattacks on federal agencies are up between 50 and 100 percent in the past year.

A new survey by the Professional Services Council found that at least 28 percent of chief information officers at federal agencies reported an increase in cyberattacks of 51 to 100 percent over the past year.

Related: Cyber Security Office Deemed Dysfunctional

The increasing threat of cyber hacks against the government isn’t surprising. Earlier this year, the Government Accountability Office listed federal IT operations as one of the most serious weaknesses in the federal government and in its annual “High Risk” report, the GAO labeled this vulnerability a major threat to national security.

Just last week, the Obama administration announced that Chinese cyber thieves hacked into the Office of Personnel Management’s massive government data system and accessed more than 4 million federal workers’ personal data. ABC News reported that the hackers potentially gained access to some Cabinet member data as well.

In the aftermath of the breach, President Obama called on agencies to ramp up cyber security efforts. However, the problem, according to the PSC survey, is that the government is having trouble recruiting skilled cyber experts.

Related: Federal Government Hacked: Chinese Cyber Thieves Target Fed’s Personal Info

Some 63 percent of CIOs reported that their agencies were not sufficiently prepared to develop necessary talent. Most cited limited resources and government salaries as obstacles to competing with employers in the private sector.

Commerce Department CIO Steve Cooper said hiring young people is a major challenge. The average age of Commerce employees is about 50 years old, NextGov noted.

The CIOs’ responses are in line with a separate GAO report from earlier this year that found there is a major skills gap within the federal workforce when it comes to IT and cybersecurity.

Why Your Next Phone Could Be Powered By Seawater

Wikipedia
By Andrew Lumby

Lithium is more than just a pretty solid Nirvana track – it’s also the reason that the portable computer in your pocket can keep on tweeting, e-mailing and otherwise vibrating for hours on end.

But soon there may not be enough available to go around.

As the demand for long-lasting batteries in cell-phones, laptops, and electric cars increases, so too does demand for Lithium, their key ingredient.

The U.S. Geological Survey estimated recently that conventional lithium reserves provide enough for production of 37,000 tons of the element per year for 365 years. That sounds like a lot, but with over a million electric cars expected in 2020, the development of battery clusters that power smart homes (like Tesla’s Powerwall), and increasing availability of lithium-powered consumer electronics, demand is sure to rise exponentially every year.

To battle the problem of Lithium shortage, researchers are looking to some unconventional sources. In Japan, for instance, scientists at the Atomic Energy Agency are working on a method to extract lithium from seawater through dialysis. According to a report from MIT Technology Review, “The system is based on a dialysis cell with a membrane consisting of a superconductor material,” a sentence which presumably means something to someone, somewhere.

Though the method is a long way away from being used commercially, one of the lead scientists on the project, Tsuyoshi Hoshino wrote that this particular method of extracting Lithium “shows good energy efficiency and is easily scalable.” Hoshino adds that his method could be commercialized in five years.

If Hoshino’s method makes it to commercialization, it could be a huge boom for the lithium battery industry, especially to powerhouse Tesla. Mineral assays of Nevada’s salt lakes have shown promising concentrations of lithium, which also happens to be where the battery pioneer plans to build its massive battery production plant, known as the “Gigafactory.”

For now, though, we’re stuck with a reliance on more conventional lithium sources.

More Americans Smell Fear—not Roses—When They Retire

iStockphoto/The Fiscal Times
By Beth Braverman

The shine is coming off of Americans’ expectations for their Golden Years. 

Two-thirds of Americans anticipate being stressed about their finances in retirement, and nearly 60 percent don’t think they’ll have enough money, according to a new report by Merrill Edge

The report found that younger generations—Gen Xers and Millennial--are the most likely to expect to feel stress in retirement. Nearly half of those who aren’t retired expect to work in retirement, and 41 percent said they’ll rely on the government for financial help in retirement. 

It may not be as bad as they expect. The survey also looked at how current retirees were doing, and it found a brighter picture. About 75 percent of current retirees believe they’ll have enough money to last through retirement, while just 57 percent of pre-retirees feel the same.   

Related: 5 Things No One Ever Tells You About Retirement

One promising finding in the report: Americans are putting a higher priority on saving for the future, perhaps because of their anxiety about running out of money. More than 60 percent of those surveyed said they would prioritize saving for the future, versus less than half of those asked the same question last year. 

“In comparison to a year ago, we’re seeing a significant jump in positive investment behaviors and intent,” Aron Levine, head of Bank of America Preferred Banking and Merrill Edge said in a statement. “It’s encouraging to see Americans prioritizing the future along with the present and turning financial concerns into positive investment decisions.”

Marriage?? Young Americans Aren't Even Shacking Up

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By Millie Dent

You’ve probably heard that marriage among young adults has been on the decline, but a new Gallup poll finds that the percentage of 18-to-29-year-olds living with a partner has flatlined in recent years.

“This means that not only are fewer young adults married, but also that fewer are in committed relationships,” Gallup’s Lydia Saad wrote Monday. “As a result, the percentage of young adults who report being single and not living with someone has risen dramatically in the past decade.” 

Related: The Bad News About All the Singles in America

That percentage has risen from 52 percent in 2004 to 64 percent last year, Gallup says. The data doesn’t necessarily mean young adults are avoiding relationships entirely. Young people are just less likely to make a serious commitment associated with moving in together.

The trend hasn’t carried through to Americans in their 30s, who are only a bit more likely to be single than they were a decade ago. Marriage among people in this age group has also declined in popularity, but the percentage of 30-somethings living with a partner has jumped from 7 percent to 13 percent.

 

The new data suggests that, if young people don’t feel ready for marriage, they may not feel up for long-term commitment yet, either. (In some cases, that may be because they’re still living with their parents.) “This doesn't necessarily mean young adults are staying out of relationships, just that they are less likely to be making the more serious commitment associated with moving in together — whether in marriage or not,” Saad wrote.

The societal question, she said, is whether those single 20-somethings stay that way into their 30s. A Gallup poll from 2013 suggests that young adults may not be avoiding marriage altogether, but are just pushing it back. In that survey, 56 percent of Americans aged 18 to 34 said they were unmarried but did want to tie the knot at some point. Only 9 percent in the same age group said they were unmarried and wanted to stay that way. The most common reasons people listed for not being married yet included having not found the right person, being too young or not ready to get married and money concerns.

In other words, they might someday say “I do,” but for now they definitely don’t.