Recently graduated MBA are facing a tough job market, even if they attended some of the best business schools in the world like Harvard.
According to recent Harvard Business School statistics, only 86% of graduates MBA seeking employment-jobs received an offer. For the class of 2022, approximately 95% of those seeking a job had offers, and 96% for the class of 2021, according to the data.
According to a report from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, only 89% of the most recent class seeking a job had an offer by the three month mark. Three months after graduation, 93 percent of MBA holders had an offer, down from 93% last year.
As compared to 2022, job placement rates at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business are also down slightly this year
While industries that typically recruit MBA graduates – such as tech and consulting – are slowing down their hiring, MBA rates are declining. Bain and Ernst & Young consultancies have delayed hiring dates while business remains slow. As a result of the pandemic, tech companies have also cut costs by reducing hiring, or even implementing hiring freezes.
MBA 360 founder Barbara Coward told the Financial Times that firms are taking a “wait and see” approach to new hires in an uncertain market.
Although recent grads may have felt stressed during the limbo period between graduation and starting a new job, it has also given some new opportunities to travel or take on roles they might not have taken on otherwise, according to Kristen Fitzpatrick, Harvard’s managing director of MBA career and professional development.
(Just under a third of the class of 2023) who chose not to look for a job at Harvard either started their own business, were already employed, or continued their education. According to the report, no one in the graduating class said they simply postponed their job search.
As a silver lining, some of the positions that prospective workers are waiting for might be worth it. MBA starting salaries have seen a noticeable increase in recent years, and employee wage expectations have also risen.
Harvard Business School graduates /MBA are starting jobs with an average salary of $175,000, up from $150,000 in 2021, and Stanford GSB graduates are starting with an average salary of $182,000, up from $158,000 in 2021.
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