Brittany Misra thought she had all the education she needed to land a good job when she graduated from Emory University in 2008. But with her degree in bio-cultural anthropology and sociology, she wound up serving lattes at Starbucks.
Her Plan B? More education. Misra, now 25, took another year and a half and picked up an Associate in Arts degree from The Art Institute of Atlanta-Decatur. Now she’s digital marketing director for an Atlanta dental practice.
Misra’s story offers a hopeful, if cautionary, tale for workers in today’s job market. Education does not guarantee a job, but it can help, particularly if it provides the specific talents an employer needs.
“They want you to come in with a skill set and hit the ground running,” Misra said.
Georgia workers might take note. The state jobless rate hit 10.2 percent in August, it was announced Thursday, up from 10.1 percent in July and the same as one year ago. It has exceeded the U.S. rate, now 9.1 percent, for 49 consecutive months.
Nationally, the number of people applying for unemployment benefits rose last week to the highest level since June.
As labor officials and economists ponder how to boost employment, increased education often is cited. Statistics show that the more education a person has, the more likely he is to be employed.
In Georgia, people with a high school diploma but no college had a 12.8 percent unemployment rate in 2010. Those with a Bachelor’s degree or higher had an unemployment rate of 5.3 percent.
The impact of educational attainment on unemployment rates is just as pronounced in other years, whether before, during or after the recession. For example, in 2006, when employment was still strong, workers with a high school diploma but no college had an unemployment rate of 4.2 percent. Workers with a Bachelor’s degree or better had an unemployment rate of 1.4 percent.
“It’s really quite striking,” said Rachana Bhatt, assistant professor of economics at the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies at Georgia State University.
The data, she said, “suggests that higher levels of education lead to higher levels of employment. But there are lot of other factors.”
One is whether the education level meets employer demands. For example, in a community where there are plenty of jobs that don’t require college, more education may not be as important.
As Misra’s case shows, a degree, even one from a prestigious university, doesn’t necessarily translate into a desired job offer. Because of such uncertainty and the high cost of tuition, some experts suggest students research the job prospects for their field of study and for a school’s graduates -- especially if they plan to go in debt for a degree.
While a degree typically results in better pay, it isn’t a shield from layoffs, either.
“Everybody is susceptible, particularly in a down economy,” said Emory Mulling, chairman of Mulling Corporation, an Atlanta talent management consulting firm.
The vulnerability of even college-educated workers was seen in a recent survey, which showed that college graduates were the fastest-growing group of people who filed for bankruptcy protection in the last five years. People with a bachelor’s degree accounted for 13.6 percent of those who filed in 2010, up from 11.2 percent in 2006, according to the non-profit Institute for Financial Literacy.
At a career fair at Georgia Tech this week, representatives of 190 companies were on hand on the first day of a two-day event to talk about job opportunities for students and alumni of the school.
Ralph Mobley, director of career services, said, “For our students, there’s been an upward trend in recruitment and in subsequent employment.”
Atlantan Glenn Woods, who doesn’t have a college degree, believes he will benefit from getting one. The 23-year-old has a part-time position handling video production and social media for Radio One, a radio station company.
Woods landed an internship with the company after studying at a broadcasting school, but said he will need a college degree to land a managerial position or to get a full-time job at some companies.
“I have the experience,” he reasoned. “I just need the degree.”
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