The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently announced what many involved in college recruiting have suspected for months: Americans between 20 and 29 years old have the highest unemployment rate of any age group. The national unemployment rate is 6.7 per cent. For those aged 25 to 29, the unemployment rate rose from five percent in November 2007 to a whopping 7.3 per cent in November 2008. Even worse was the unemployment rate for those between 20 and 24 years of age. In November 2007 it was 7.7 percent but in November 2008 it had climbed to 10.4 percent.

So what are we hearing? Most employers are telling us that they've scaled back their plans to hire more college students and recent graduates this year and instead the overall hiring plans seem to be roughly flat. In other words, an employer that a year ago hired 500 people may have planned as recently as a few months ago to hire 600 this year but they've likely since scaled that back to the same 500 as they hired last year. In addition, those same employers are deferring their offers so they can be more certain about what the economy will be like next spring and beyond and when they do extend those offers they're extending fewer of them. That's partially due to the scaled back hiring but also because candidates are far more likely this year to accept the first offer they receive so employers are getting a higher percentage of acceptances.