Some recent job market trends for MBAs

Here is a link to some recent job trend reports. Useful for MBA aspirants to do a reality check.

• http://www.mba-channel.com/channel/article/stable-job-situation
• http://topmba.com/mba-careers/mba-recruitment-and-salary/trends-2009-report
• http://www.gmac.com/NR/rdonlyres/3035EE49-0580-4D04-9D31-93387FD06D86/0/GlobalManagementSurvey2009SR.pdf
• http://www.businessweek.com/print/bschools/content/sep2009/bs20090928_592028.htm
• http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142152/List_of_H_1B_visa_employers_for_2009
  

 Some important learnings

• Overall, the global demand for MBA graduates has decreased by five percent. This decline is particularly noticeable in the financial services sector, in which new hires have decreased by ten percent. Only the consulting sector has seen a three-percent rise despite the declining trend . In contrast, the demand in the industrial sector remained the same, while the technology sector saw a one-percent increase.
• Despite thousands of career casualties, the crisis has not made MBA students any less eager to charge into the front lines of finance.A third of 2009 full-time MBA candidates plan to pursue careers at finance and accounting firms, level with the past two years, according to annual surveys by the Graduate Management Admission Council, a nonprofit group that administers the GMAT.
  
• The MBA degree is clearly becoming increasingly important in the emerging markets. Companies here are looking for graduates who can help them exhaust their growth opportunities on the global market.
• 77 percent of the employers surveyed prefer MBA grads with over three years of professional experience. The demand for younger graduates is lower than ever before, as only two percent of employers look for graduates with less than one year career experience.
• The averages usually reported by schools tell prospective students only part of the story. Means and medians, like the ones reported on BusinessWeek's Web site, mostly gloss over the experiences of students in atypical careers such as microfinance or public service. And numbers outside the averages or ranges can be hard to come by, leaving students to play an uncomfortable guessing game in the shadow of student loans.  
• One of the more stark divisions represented in the data is the pay disparity between different programs. According to PayScale, graduates from the Top 10 programs will make nearly twice as much as the typical MBA. And that pay advantage wears off fast after the Top 10, says Al Lee, PayScale's director of quantitative analysis. "Outside of the Top 20 [ranked schools], you're under six figures," he says. Even worse news for students at lower-ranked programs: "By the time you get out of the Top 30 you're talking just a small premium over the average school,"

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