Melanie Barker has given up on the idea of re-entering the job market even though she will soon have earned two degrees.
“I feel the economy is not much better off right now,” said Barker. “And, it won’t be any better this May than it was last May.”
Barker, 22, will graduate from ETSU in spring 2009 for the second time with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. She decided to come back to school when months of job searching proved barren with her first degree in marketing.
After applying for several jobs in Knoxville, Nashville and Johnson City, she discovered that all places required something more than she received with her college degree.
“Most places wanted you to have two to three years experience,” said Barker. “Or they want you to start out in commission sales. And I’m not interested in living pay check to pay check.”
With five years of college, two degrees, and still no job offers, Barker has a little advice for other college students. “Make sure you do the internships even if they are not paid. It is much better off in the long run to have plenty of experience.”
However, experience may not be the only factor making it so difficult to find jobs after graduation. Unemployment rates have jumped by 43 percent in Johnson City as compared to the same time last year, according to the Tri-Cities Labor Market Report.
“All doubts are now removed – the U.S. economy is in a recession,” said the report, which also estimated that nearly 700,000 jobs have been lost nationwide since 2007. Steb Hipple, ETSU economics professor and director of ETSU’s Bureau of Business and Economic Research, wrote in the report that the high level of unemployment is “swollen” because of a surge of new people seeking jobs.
The employment total in Johnson City has gone down from 53,956 in the third quarter last year to 53,171 this year. The difference does not seem to be much but Hipple attributes the jump in unemployment to the additional people coming into the job market.
“When family income is reduced by inflation or unemployment, then family members go job hunting – primarily for semi-skilled and part time work,” said Hipple. “So the number of unemployed increases by the number of job losers, and the number of new workers forced into searching for jobs, primarily teenagers, housewives, and retirees.”
Some students are adopting the same mentality as Barker in thinking that returning to school may be easier than finding a job right now.
Currently, 398 students are enrolled in graduate school at ETSU. From 1996 to 2006, exactly 130 ETSU college graduates have returned for a second bachelor degree here.
One of the popular second-degree programs is in the college of nursing. Mountain States’ second degree accelerated nursing program is a competitive 18-month program at ETSU. About 30 students graduate from this program every December.
Scott Vaughn, director of student services for the College of Nursing, said he thought that the surge in unemployment might have something to do with students returning for another degree.
“I think that is probably a factor and there are certainly fields where people don’t find work as easily as nursing,” said Vaughn. He also said that many people may discover what they were passionate about after obtaining their first degree.
Health services is one of the five sectors that saw a growth in employment this quarter, according to the labor report. The 2000 Census reports that health service employees make up the highest group of workers in Johnson City, accounting for 24.8 percent of the population
“Most of our students who get the second degree are staying in East Tennessee,” said Vaughn. “A lot of them will go to work at Mountain States because they are funding [the program] and the students have a good relationship with them.”
A study published in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics titled “The Outlook for college graduates, 1998-2008: A balancing act” concluded that because of the retiring baby boomers, there would be many job opportunities in 2008.
It also said that even though the employment outlook is improving, “an average of more than 90,000 college graduates each year will continue to enter positions that do not require skills learned in a bachelor’s degree program.”
As for Barker, she plans to pack her backpack and head to school again for her graduate degree in psychology. Her reasoning: “I think having different degrees will make me stand out a little.

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