Historically, college students who graduate into a recession have settled for lower-paying jobs at less prestigious companies

For the Class of 2020, a Job-Eating Virus Recalls the Great Recession: With interviews postponed and internships canceled, graduates seeking work fear for the future by David Yaffe-Bellany and Jaclyn Peiser of The NY Times. Excerpts:

"A number of major companies, including Yelp and Disney, have suspended their internship programs, a common route to a first job for many graduating seniors. At some job fairs in early March, major companies simply didn’t show up; now all those career events have been canceled."

"Historically, college students who graduate into a recession have settled for lower-paying jobs at less prestigious companies than people who finished college even a year earlier. Economists have found that the impact of that bad luck can linger for as long as 10 or 15 years, leading to higher unemployment rates and lower salaries — a phenomenon known as “scarring.”"

"“I’m worried for them,” said Lisa Kahn, an economist who has studied how recessions affect college graduates. “If they’re graduating into a large recession, they’re going to suffer some pretty severe short-term consequences. And that’s probably going to stay with them for almost the next decade.”"

"Some industries, like nursing, have even seen an increase in job listings, according to ZipRecruiter. The number of e-commerce listings rose 228 percent over the past four weeks compared to last year. Personal consulting jobs went up 26 percent."

Also Expectations run into reality after graduating during the recession by Scott Tong of Marketplace. Excerpts:

"“We certainly find a significant fraction of graduates that are permanently affected,” said Philip Oreopoulos, an economist at the University of Toronto who has published on this topic. “And even for those who are not, they do come off quite worse off over the lifetime.”

As far as earnings over a lifetime, studies find recession graduates can make $60,000 to $100,000 less than their luckier peers.

Oreopoulos found in his study that young recession graduates tend to start out in low-paying first jobs at smaller firms.

“Not only did they end up with lower wages,” he said, “but they ended up in firms that tended to be smaller and tended to pay less.”"

Also The Career Effects Of Graduating In A Recession from the National Bureau of Economic Research.