Pasadena, CA -- (SBWIRE) --06/01/2011 -- The employment scenario for new college graduates continues to improve with hiring up by almost 20 percent compared to last year.

The salaries are also higher for 2011 graduates, by 5.9 percent, reaching an average of $50,462. The figures are from the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE). But the recent graduates, people who graduated two to four years ago, are being left behind in this hiring wave. Just over half of them have full-time jobs and fewer still have jobs in their fields.

The best placed among the 2011 graduates are engineers. Hiring for engineers is up by 97.1 percent according to the NACE. These figures are based on the information given by the companies surveyed by NACE. Graduates from majors related to manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, and computers are also well placed for the job market.

But graduates from fields such as education, liberal arts, and journalism majors are facing a tough time getting jobs in their fields. One of the reasons is that graduates from these majors usually rely on government hiring to a considerable degree. But with government cuts at all levels, they are among the worst affected new graduates. The hardest hit are the education majors, among whom only 19 percent got offers compared to last year’s 22 percent.

There are employers which are taking on new and recent graduates. But they may not be necessarily being advertising on the typical job boards which several of them cannot afford to pay.

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