Aug. 28—Lacee Fedeler was never concerned about finding a job after graduating with a master's degree in accounting.

"I was reassured throughout high school and college, 'You will find a job,' Fedeler said. "It wasn't one of the front-running things, but it's definitely a beneficial factor in choosing accounting."

According to data from the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, or DEED, accountants and auditors make up the fifth highest demand occupation in the state requiring at least a bachelor's degree.

Fedeler connected with the firm she now works for while still at Minnesota State University and is comfortable with where she's at. In addition to choosing a lucrative major, Fedeler seemed to graduate at the right time. Minnesota's unemployment rate recently dipped to the lowest of any state since data started to be tracked in 1976, at 1.8%.

"When I talk to students, I say, 'If you want to go for a bachelor's degree, go for it,'" DEED regional analyst Tim O'Neill said. "If you've got that motivation, you'll do just fine in the labor market. You'll find that job that you're looking for."

However, one student who, like Fedeler, graduated in May from MSU, reflected a different experience post-graduation. Manuel Alanis Andrade said he felt overwhelming pressure to land a job after graduation, as he only had enough saved up for two more months' rent at his apartment in Mankato.

"I was telling my friends, 'I'm about to become homeless,'" Alanis Andrade said.

An aviation management major, Alanis Andrade applied to as many jobs as he could in the industry but struggled to find openings. Running out of time, he reached out to the MSU admissions office, where he had worked for two years as a student assistant. After a long process, he managed to secure a position as an admissions officer in the Twin Cities.

While not in the industry he had hoped to work in, Alanis Andrade decided to make the best out of the job by taking the free classes offered to him with the intent of completing a master's degree in business administration. He said he hopes this degree will better suit him to apply for positions in aviation management in the future.

Alanis Andrade said despite the low unemployment rate, entering the workforce after college is still difficult for first-generation students like himself. He said he lacks models for what post-graduation life looks like and, because he is low-income, has been harder hit by tuition hikes and inflation than many other students.

"First-generation students need to work to be able to pay for education," Alanis Andrade said. "And so if you lose your job, you have to take less classes, or even drop from college to be able to pay for rent. So that is the financial situation that I was passing through ... It was just hard for me to think about what's next."

Both Alanis Andrade and O'Neill said they recommend students take advantage of any internships or volunteer opportunities related to their field of interest ahead of graduation.

Alanis Andrade said he quickly realized that while his education qualified him for the positions he wanted, he lacked the professional experience that would've made him a more competitive candidate.

"We need to accommodate ourselves," Alanis Andrade said. "And it comes by major ... I know friends who work at a restaurant because they didn't have a job lined up."

O'Neill recognizes the challenges students who are not entering high-growth industries face, especially those who are lower-income and have to take out large student loans to pay off in the years following graduation.

In southwestern Minnesota, the highest-demand occupations in many cases do not require a college degree, such as the top four: home health and personal care aides, retail salespeople, cashiers, and fast-food and counter workers.

"A huge chunk of these jobs typically are not going to require higher levels of post-secondary education, and they are typically going to be lower-paying jobs," O'Neill said. "Looking at those jobs and asking, 'What are the wages? Do they have wages that can sustain myself, a family?'"

Brandon Van Meveren, who graduated spring of last year, works at a meat snack manufacturer in Mankato as a human resources coordinator. He said he participated in MSU's Integrated Business Experience while in school, which helped him gain real-world experience helping run a nonprofit business and helped him get several job offers after graduation.

While he was able to accept a position with a solid starting wage by the following fall, Van Meveren said the positions he interviewed for at the start of his job search process offered surprisingly low pay.

"When it came down to the negotiation side of things, a lot of places didn't really offer a wage that I felt was good for being out of college, like a lot of them were offering like $15, $16," Van Meveren said. "I could get a job stacking shelves for that."

O'Neill said he thinks in part due to the large number of job openings, many employers will soon start to provide better benefits and environments to their workers to attract more young, college-educated candidates.

"How am I going to get that work experience if I'm just entering the labor market?" O'Neill said. "I think we are starting to turn that corner where employers are really starting to take a hard look at their applications and the requirements that they have, doing more on-the-job training and really investing in the worker."

Because the many millennials who graduated into the Great Recession faced a grim job market that delayed career goals and accumulation of wealth, concern of an upcoming recession is not lost on Gen Z. But O'Neill said he is optimistic that due to the conditions of the current labor market, the unemployment rate won't skyrocket like it did over a decade ago.

"If we do have a recession, of course, there's gonna be a lot of challenges," O'Neill said. "But I think it will have a different flavor than past recessions where there's still going to be a need for workers ... The stuff that you're doing today is only going to help you going forward, and that's including if there's any recessions that come up or if we continue with expansion."