Students who graduate in December and May could experience more ease finding a job.

Employers recently added 173,000 new jobs to the market. What effect does this action have on soon-to-be college graduates? With this relatively large increase in job positions, the unemployment rate dropped to 5.1 percent, the lowest it has been since the end of the recession in 2008.  Luckily, this is expected to increase the possibility that new graduates will more easily find jobs in their field of study.

Health and social assistance account for 56,000 of those positions, which is an impressive 32.4 percent of the added positions.  While food service positions gained 26,000 (15 percent), and financial positions gained 19,000 (11 percent), jobs that consist of auto and durable goods manufacturing only gained 10,000 new positions (0.06 percent of the new positions).  We can assume, based on these statistics, that graduating college students entering the job market for specific positions, such as those in health and finance, are more likely to find a job in their field.

At a certain point, usually between 3.5 and 4.5 percent, unemployment rates can drop too low and hurt the nation’s economy.  At 5.1 percent, however, the economy has the potential to thrive. Lower unemployment rates simply mean higher employment rates, indicating that the majority of the workforce has a job and that there are less people searching for a job.

This leads to an increase in not only pay, but also benefits and quality treatment toward employees, because employers want to keep the qualified employees that they already have due to a shortage of potential replacements.

In the case of graduating college students, employers will offer these similar competitive wage rates and benefits. This aims to attract any replacements that they would potentially need. Investors are more likely to enjoy the lower unemployment rate due to the potential for raising interest rates. In order to prevent the market from plummeting or inflation from occurring, these rates need to be raised at some point. Professionals are currently deciding when that certain point will be and will decide within the next month or so when the first increase in interest rates will occur since before the recession in early 2006.

College graduates should be grateful for the decrease in unemployment rates.  We are educated and we are looking for jobs in a more competitive market where employers need educated employees in order to gain competitive advantage. In essence, we are the advantage.