Lynsie Salazar graduated in December with a communication degree, but can't find a marketing or pharmaceutical sales job. She's starting to look outside California.

Julia Roman received a master's degree in human behavior in May, but has looked unsuccessfully for full-time work in a related field. She's making ends meet by offering child and animal care.

Chris Balding got his diploma in marketing in the fall of 2009, and after nine months settled for an entry-level office job with state government. He wants to put his degree to better use.

Vince Vicari earned a degree in journalism and Spanish and hosted his own radio show at Sacramento State, but hasn't landed a paying broadcasting job since graduating in December. He's doing some temp accounting work and waiting tables at a Mexican restaurant.

After a while, these stories start to sound distressingly similar.

Parents and teachers have counseled young people for generations: Get into college, work hard, graduate and get a good job. It is the grand bargain that is a foundation of our middle class.

Today, that piece of the American Dream is in tatters.

The Great Recession is taking a toll on thousands and thousands who had the misfortune to graduate in the last few years. Could their timing have been much worse?

First, many faced stiff competition just to get into college because many schools, especially the most selective ones, had record numbers of applicants since 2006. It was partly demographics – the number of high school graduates peaked in 2009. It was also technology – online forms made it easier to apply to more colleges.

If they attended a University of California or California State University school, they had to deal with tuition and fee hikes, along with cuts in courses that narrowed their choices and made it more difficult to graduate on time.

Then, they stepped off campus into the worst economic downturn in generations. With each graduating class adding to the backlog of unemployed, the battle for available jobs gets tougher.

For the students, they face long-term damage to their earnings and career prospects. Some may never fully recover.

And for places like Sacramento where the economic recovery is agonizingly slow, if lots of recent college graduates leave in search of jobs, the brain drain could be devastating. They would start businesses, have families and be active in civic life. If they move to the East Coast or go off to Texas for work, they may never return.

There are certainly success stories of graduates getting good jobs, if not their dream ones.

Still, after listening to some recent Sacramento State grads who are still looking for work, I can easily see myself in their shoes. I readily admit that if I applied now, I wouldn't get into Duke University, where I went in the early 1980s, because there are twice as many applicants. I majored in history and English, so journalism was one of my few career options. Given that newspapers aren't exactly in a hiring binge these days, I think I'd be hosed.

Jobless figures are grim

The statistics for recent grads are nothing short of depressing:

• Fewer graduates are finding work.

While about 90 percent of 2006 and 2007 grads reported having had at least one job since getting their diploma, only 56 percent of 2010 grads had, according to a survey for a Rutgers University study released in May.

The Economic Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, reported in April that the unemployment rate for college grads 24 and younger averaged 9.3 percent in 2010, a big jump from 5.4 percent in 2007, before the recession. "It is likely that the class of 2011 will face the highest unemployment rate for young college graduates since the Great Recession began," the institute says. The outlook for black and Latino graduates is even worse.

• Those who do have jobs are earning less.

With a bounty of applicants for fewer openings, starting salaries for four-year college grads in 2009 and 2010 averaged $27,000, down 10 percent from those who got their degrees in 2006 and 2007, according to the Rutgers study. At the same time, many graduates have loans to worry about.

• Many who have jobs are not in the fields they studied.

More than half of recent college grads in one survey didn't even have jobs that required degrees. To boost their income, some are juggling several part-time jobs. One economist says that as many as half of college graduates under 25 are "underutilized" – they're unemployed, working part time or in a job not requiring a college degree.

So once the economy does bounce back, many recent graduates will be behind in developing skills, building experience and rising up the pay scale. That will put them at a disadvantage with those who graduate in better times and start right away in good jobs. Another economist says the negative impact of graduating during a recession can last 15 years.

While there are some indications the job picture is brightening this year, several recent polls found deep pessimism among new graduates. Among those who graduated from a four-year college from 2006 to 2010, 56 percent said they believe their generation will be less prosperous than the preceding generation. Only 48 percent said they expected to have more financial success than their parents, according to a survey done as part of the Rutgers study.

Grads hope to stay in area but…

We mustn't forget that behind all the numbers and analyses are real people.

Theresa Baschal has been looking for a marketing analyst or research job since graduating from Sacramento State in December 2009 with a degree in business administration.

Over the past 18 months, she figures she's applied for a couple hundred jobs, either online or at job fairs. After reading stories about how employers were looking at applicants' Facebook pages, she deleted some party photos from hers. In the meantime, she's been working part time at a campus coffee shop.

Baschal, 24, who grew up in Galt, had been living with her parents since last year, but they're moving to Michigan, so she moved in with a friend in Lodi.

She wants to stay in the Sacramento region, but says she'd go out of state for a job. She is also thinking about going back to school for her MBA.

"I'm very hopeful something's going to happen in the next couple months, but realistically, it may take longer. I am a year and a half out of school," she says with an air of resignation.

Keri Hess graduated from El Dorado High School and played basketball for two years at Cosumnes River College before breaking her ankle. She transferred to Sacramento State and after trying a couple of majors – business and psychology – found her calling in a biology class on diseases and plagues.

Hess, 24, graduated in December with a major in health science and a minor in biological sciences and has been trying to find a job in public health, preferably in epidemiology.

No luck.

"I thought I would find a job in a couple of months," she says. "I want to do research in the public health field, but I would do anything in public health right now to get my foot in the door."

So to make ends meet, she's kept the part-time job she had to help pay for school at a clothing store at the Folsom outlets. While she'd rather stay in the region, she's also at the point that she'd go anywhere for a good job.

"I'm frustrated, but I'm hopeful," she says. "I still have faith that I can get a job.

"I just think it's going to take that one company, one person to give me a chance to show that I can be a great worker and that I can be an asset to whatever company hires me."

She could speak for a lot of recent grads. For their sake and for the health of the Sacramento region, we better hope that the recovery picks up steam – and fast – and creates good jobs that will keep them here.

Business and government leaders and economic development officials in the region ought to be thinking long and hard about what more they can do to stop any serious brain drain. Once under way, it will be extremely difficult to turn around.

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