American college graduates looking for a job today may be more indebted than ever before, but the Class of 2018 will be in a stronger position as the unemployment rate gradually declines over the next four years, experts say.

The unemployment rate in April fell to 6.3% from 6.7% in March, according to recent data from the Labor Department, and the rate for Americans aged 20 through 24 — those who are graduating from college — was much higher than the overall rate: It fell to 10.6% in April from 12.2% in March versus 11.9% the month before. “Many of us are stuck doing part-time work that we’re underqualified for just because there are so few opportunities out there,” says Corie Whalen, 26, spokeswoman for Generation Opportunity, a non-profit think-tank based in Arlington, Va.

Job availability is not the only problem facing graduates. “For every percentage point rise in unemployment, initial earnings go down by 2% to 3%,” says Till von Wachter, associate professor of economics at the University of California, Los Angeles. These losses move in a proportional fashion to the unemployment rate, he adds, so when the unemployment rate is 2 points higher, earnings go down about 4% to 5%.

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Earnings losses for graduates in a period of high unemployment persist for the first 10 years of their working life, according to a study co-authored by von Wachter on male college graduates. So those who graduated when the Great Recession hit in 2008 will only start to move to normalized earnings — what they would have earned had the recession not occurred — around 2018. “Graduating in 2014 would obviously be far better than in 2010, but 2018 will be even better,” he says.

Government figures estimate that the U.S. economy will be in a much stronger position for the Class of 2018. By the end of 2017, the gap between gross domestic product and potential GDP — that is, the maximum sustainable output of the U.S. economy — is expected to be nearly eliminated, the Congressional Budget Office forecast last February. Between 2018 and 2024, for example, GDP will expand at the same rate as potential output — by an average of 2.2% a year, the CBO projects.

The American job market will also gradually improve during the next four years, studies show. The unemployment rate will fall to between 5.6% and 5.9% next year, and to between 5.2% and 5.6% in 2016, and will remain at those levels in subsequent years, according to the economic projections of the Federal Reserve. And the White House “Economic and Budget Analyses” sees unemployment continuing to decline over the next five years, stabilizing at 5.4% by 2018.

Unemployment continues to rise globally, however, especially among young people, and large numbers of discouraged potential workers are still outside the labor market, the 2014 report by the United Nations’ International Labour Organization concluded. The good news? An additional 200 million jobs will be created globally by 2018. Currently, there are 74.5 million people under 25 currently unemployed, a 13% unemployment rate, more than twice the overall global unemployment rate, the ILO added.

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When job mobility is high, graduates move to larger, higher paying companies, von Wachter says. “And they still have to do some catching up within firms.” The last few years have not been kind to graduates. Only half of those who graduated since 2006 were employed full time six years later, a survey by Rutgers University found, and college graduates who obtained their first job between 2009 and 2011 earned $27,000 a year or 10% less than those who entered the workforce two years earlier.

Job mobility is already improving, however. The percentage of U.S. workers who voluntarily left their jobs hit 1.8% in March, the most recent month for which figures are available, effectively unchanged from February, but still higher than 1.7% in January and the recent low of 1.2% in September 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics data released last month. (A high “churn” or quit rate often means there are better job opportunities opening up — and more opportunities for those seeking their first job.)

But graduates looking for jobs in industries where it’s harder to find them — agriculture or leisure and hospitality rather than technology and construction — should further their education if they can afford to, says Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. And graduates should try to work in a job as close to their desired field as possible. “If you have an accounting degree and get a job as a buyer for Macy’s department store, at some point the value of the accounting degree begins to degrade,” he says. “You’ve got to be careful where you start.”

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On the upside, the Class of 2018 will be acutely aware of challenges within the labor market, says Carl Van Horn, professor of public policy and director of Rutgers’ John J. Heldrich Center for Workforce Development. “This was the first recession of this magnitude during their lifetime,” he says. “The recessions in the early 2000s were short and shallow,” Van Horn says. The recession in the early 1980s was a very deep recession, but the worst hit areas were mining, construction and manufacturing, he adds.

But he’s less sure if the Class of 2018 will have it that much better than the Class of 2014. “There’s a reasonable probability that they’ll be better off,” Van Horn says. “In general, however, social scientists are not very good at predicting the future. The labor market we’re in right now is so volatile and uncertain. We’re still in a sluggish recovery. There are still too many educated people chasing too few opportunities. Four years is a long term to predict. Who knows what the next crisis will bring?”

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