Students across the country are beginning to discover that a college degree doesn't guarantee a career anymore.
Unemployment rates for people ages 20 to 24 have ballooned to 9.8 percent according to the U.S. Department of Labor, a number that has left college graduates scratching their heads and moving back in with mom and dad.
Jessica Sullivan graduated from UF with a bachelor's degree in psychology and health education and years of work experience, but she was unprepared for a slumping economy and a highly competitive job market.
"It's frustrating because it feels like it's individual, but I have friends having the same problem," Sullivan said.
"I kind of gave up on finding a job that utilized my degrees," she said.
Sullivan had an internship at the Alachua County Crisis Center gaining hands-on experience.
"I had a lot of background in that," she said. "I'd been doing face-to-face counseling for a few years."
Even with her employment experience, she was hard pressed to even find secretarial work.
"I would have made more money working right out of high school," Sullivan said.
Professor David Denslow, a research economist for the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at UF, said Florida's economy is worse than the rest of the country.
"The number of people employed is declining, and when that happens the entry level is always hit hard," Denslow said.
If people enter the workforce when the economy is down, he said, they remain at a lower economic level than if they waited to enter at a more prosperous time.
"It's a good time to go ahead and take that trip to Europe or go for an advanced degree," he said.
