The Trouble with Working It Essay -- Unemployment Jobs Careers Essays

The Trouble with Working It Alison Hooker is a bright young woman. She is a middler communications major at Northeastern University and performing well in her classes. She has experience as a waitress and recently finished her first co-op at a broadcasting company in her native Chicago. She is friendly and outgoing, and carries herself with a confident, yet approachable demeanor. In all regards, she appears to be a capable and collected individual. Despite all these positive attributes, however, Hooker has been unable to find a job in Boston. â€Å"I’ve applied so many places,† said Hooker, who has been persistently searching for work since returning to Boston in January. â€Å"It takes a lot of time to go out and apply to a lot of different places, and it’s even harder when you have classes all during the day. I can’t even remember every place I applied to, probably because a lot of them never even called back.† Hooker isn’t alone in her sentiments of frustration. Within the past few years, finding a job has become increasingly difficult for people across the nation. Unemployment rates have, with few exceptions, been steadily climbing, and that trend is reflected in many discouraged would-be workers. In Boston alone, average unemployment rates more than doubled in the past four years, from 2.9% in 2000 to a full 6% in 2003, according to statistics from the Massachusetts Division of Employment and Training (MDET). Finding and maintaining employment has been difficult for white-collar professionals, let alone unskilled college students that are only available for part-time hours. On the rare occasions that unemployment rates have declined in recent months, many analysts dismiss the seemingly positive statistic as a sign of the ... ...re hoping that things will soon be looking up for the average campus dweller. The statistics vary and the interpretations contradict; for Alison Hooker, however, all that matters is whether all this economic debate will lead to her finding a paycheck. â€Å"It costs a lot of money to go to this school, and it would be really nice to be making some back,† she said. â€Å"I am not all that concerned about getting a real job after school. I think that the job contacts I’m making through co-op will help a lot with that,† said Hooker, who has plans to return to her previous co-op at a Chicago broadcasting corporation in June of 2004. â€Å"I’m not even looking for anything all that great right now, just something part-time. And I just feel like, I made it into college and am getting through all this higher learning- should it really be more difficult to get hired at Starbucks?†