<p>My hope as well. Unfortunately, until consumer confidence rises enough for private industry to feel comfortable about expansion and new hiring, these will remain the biggest players out there. </p>
<p>If you talk with parents of 2009 and 2010 college graduates, the longest lines at career fairs and the greatest rise in application numbers surround government and not-for-profit supported opportunities from Treasury, DOD, Homeland Security, Teach for America, AmeriCorps, Peace Corps… In the sciences over the past 6 months, academic research labs have landed newly minted Federal Recovery Act stimulus money. It’s allowed for expanded staffing with a lot of these new jobs now available to fresh college grads (most with STEM backgrounds).</p>
<p>Obviously, private sector hiring for college grads is not dead, but remains at a fraction of what once existed. And hiring often (again, as many parents of recent grads can tell you quite unhappily) takes the form more and more of the unpaid internship - de rigueur decades ago, never out of style in entertainment and media, now resurrected for all career paths. From two weeks ago, also in the NYT.
[The</a> Unpaid Intern, Legal or Not - NYTimes.com](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html]The”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html)</p>