The preliminary report of the Career Plans Survey for the Class of 2013 shows an upward trend in employment for Penn graduates over the past few years.
Full-time employment is up just a little bit from 64 percent for the Class of 2012 to 65 percent for the Class of 2013. Director of Career Services Pat Rose explained that the real number of full-time employed students is actually about 71 percent, as the 5 percent who indicated short-term employment and the 1 percent who indicated continuing current employment are considered to be employed full-time.
“We know that some of the 7 percent seeking employment have actually found employment since first taking the survey over the summer,” Rose said, as Career Services found that some of the students listed employment on their LinkedIn profiles. “But we can’t count them as employed until we reach out to them and they confirm.”
Related: Almost half of College undergrads still jobless in April and beyond
The Class of 2011’s preliminary career survey showed 62 percent as employed full-time. The classes of 2010 and 2009 both had 60 percent employed full-time in their preliminary career surveys.
Related: Penn law graduates see exceptionally high employment rates
Other data from the survey indicate a strengthening economy. The number of people going to graduate school is down, “which is typically the case when we have a stronger job market,” Rose said. From 2009 to 2011, 20 percent of respondents indicated that they were going to graduate school. That number dropped to 18 percent in 2012 and now rests at 16 percent for the Class of 2013.
Related: More Ph.D. students pursue work outside academia
“What this says to me is that the economy is holding up fine and is continuing to recover,” Rose said. “It’s not as good as it was in, say, 2006, but I think this is a good thing for current students to consider — that the interest in Penn students, whether it’s to accept them in to graduate programs or offer them jobs, is very strong.”
The survey received slightly over an 80 percent response rate, with these preliminary statistics based on a total of 2,056 survey responses. This number is a little bit up from the Career Plans Survey for the Class of 2012, for which Career Services received just fewer than 2,000 survey responses. Career Services will close the survey in about two weeks.
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