With commencement approaching, University of Arizona graduates face the daunting task of finding employment as stock market and tariff fluctuations hold the labor market in limbo.

Pete Corrigan serves students, faculty and employers as the associate director of employer and alumni connections for the Student Engagement and Career Development. Before retiring young and moving from Chicago to Tucson with his family, Corrigan was a day trader on the crowded floors of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. 

“People say you can’t time the market,” Corrigan said. “Well, that’s what we did. Traders on the trading floor, whether it was for a minute or a week, you were looking to the future.”

Corrigan shared advice for undergraduate students looking to invest. 

“I think a lot of financial advisors tell you to stay in it for the long run, and you can’t argue that they’re wrong,” Corrigan said. “In the long run, the market’s always going to be higher. Historically, that’s been true.”

“But if you sold some things three weeks ago and then sat back with cash and could reinvest it now, you’d have more money,” Corrigan said.

Corrigan began work for UA at the Eller College of Management as the college’s first career coach. His services were in great demand among students, and Eller now has a career coach for every major. 

When he started work at SECD, his job was employer relations only. 

“But my favorite part is the student advising piece, and I think that you can build relations with employers by introducing them to students,” Corrigan said. Corrigan began connecting local employers to the students he advised, helping businesses find eager graduates and students arrange careers after graduation. 

Just last year, Corrigan had around 470 individual appointments with students. Students set the agenda and work on resume building, internship connections, interview prep and starting conversations with potential employers. 

“Having worked here 16 years, I know a lot of former students I keep in touch with who are more than happy to talk to students about what they do,” Corrigan said. “And then also I’m building relationships with employers, and employers love referrals.”

Throughout all of his advice, Corrigan stressed the importance of communication.

“I think a big key is talking to people,” Corrigan said. “I mean, if you’re interested in how the market works, talk to people who are involved in the market, and they can tell you about their experience and what’s worked for them.” 

“But the only way you can find that out is by talking to people,” Corrigan said. “And I think oftentimes for students that’s painful, because who wants to reach out to someone? But that’s why we’re here.”

Corrigan works on the third floor of the Bartlett Academic Student Success Center, room 301A, and encourages students to schedule a meeting and start discussing their plans for the future. 

UA junior Diego Morales works at the front desk of the SECD. He’s also one of the hundreds of students Corrigan has helped find an internship. 

“Pete [Corrigan] has actually helped me out a lot, and he’s introduced me to some people, and that’s how I’ve gotten two internships so far,” Morales said. He now interns for Sion Power Corporation. 

As a computer science major, Morales recognizes the stress and competitiveness of the career field he’s entering.

“The job market is not great right now, especially for computer science,” Morales said. “There have been a lot of layoffs happening, so that’s definitely a little stressful, but I feel more comfortable now that I’ve gotten internships and gotten that experience before actually graduating.” 

Associate professor of economics Evan Taylor spoke on the current state of national labor.

“The short answer is that the labor market is good but not great,” Taylor said. “Definitely not as good as it was a couple of years ago, right after the pandemic in 2022. The type of job, the salary and what you’re going to be doing vary a lot by the major you have.”

As of Feb. 20, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York released unemployment rates and labor market outcomes of college graduates by major. The rates differ, with the highest unemployment rate at 9.4% for anthropology and the lowest at 0.4% for nutrition sciences. 

“With the tariffs and the exemptions of the tariffs, there’s just a ton of uncertainty about what’s happening,” Taylor said. 

While the constant levying and elimination of tariffs has had a significant impact on the stock market, Taylor said that it hasn’t impacted the labor market yet. Within the next six months, he said it certainly could.

Despite the recent precarity, Taylor doubts that a financial catastrophe like that of 2008-style meltdown is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

“The two biggest uncertainties related to the labor market are the current tariffs, whether that’s going to cause a recession or not, and AI models are changing very quickly, so it’s hard to say what the cutting-edge AI is going to look like in a year or two,” Taylor said.

Taylor’s advice for students was to become financially literate. He pushed for “learning about how to invest money, how to save, how to budget, even simple things like building up a credit score so that by the time you’re 30, hopefully you can be getting loans to purchase a house.”

“I do wish we did more financial literacy classes, especially in high school,” Taylor said. The UA offers financial literacy events through the Cooperative Extension program and is hosting several sessions from April through May.

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