One grim reality faces Americans today in a way not felt for generations–there are simply not enough jobs to go around. The Bureau of Labor Statistics pegs the current unemployment rate nationally at 9.9 percent. The young have it even worse, with 16.4 percent of Americans from 20-to-24 unemployed. Those coming out of college and graduate school are entering an economy that has yet to put the class of 2009 to work.

Although hiring trends for recent grads are nominally better than they were a year ago, it is still an abysmal job market for those starting their professional careers. In a recent Wall Street Journal column, Joe Queenan put it this way:

"Over the next few weeks, hundreds of thousands of Millennials will graduate from institutions of higher learning. They will celebrate for several days, perhaps several weeks. Then they will enter a labor force that neither wants nor needs them."