America’s jobs machine finally may be churning out jobs for new college grads.
That is particularly true for students who majored in math or science, though the number of jobs available in those fields varies greatly from state to state.
Some 64 percent of hiring professionals surveyed by the Chicago-based consulting company Challenger, Gray & Christmas last month said that their companies plan to recruit from the pool of 1.8 million college graduates who will enter the job market this spring. Employers in February had about 4.2 million unfilled jobs, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Last year, graduates with degrees in math and science had two times as many entry-level jobs to apply for than students with other majors, primarily because not as many students are pursuing these degrees. On a per capita basis, Colorado topped the list in math- and science-related job openings in 2013, while Mississippi was last, according to data released this year from a labor market consultant group Burning Glass Technologies, based in Boston.
After Colorado, states that had the most entry-level STEM jobs per capita last year were Alaska, Massachusetts, Washington state and Maine .