At a job fair at Salve Regina University in Newport on Wednesday, Kelly Fenton and Kelly Sullivan, from the Providence Children’s Museum, talk with Catie Allard, left, a Salve Regina senior.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

Matthew Wodecki, 22, a marketing major at the University of Rhode Island, is among 13,500 college seniors in Rhode Island who are about to enter the worst job market that many college career professionals say they’ve ever seen. Not only are seniors competing with each other for job openings, but they also must battle a wave of recently laid-off workers, some with similar educations and more experience.

“Graduation is four, five weeks away, and I don’t have anything at the moment,” said Wodecki, of West Greenwich, “…Very few of the people I’ve spoken to have [found] anything. So now it’s a question of what do we do now.”

Wodecki said he could move back in with his parents, but he’d prefer not to. He’s considering graduate school, but said he’s already taken out student loans and does not want to be burdened by more debt.

“How long do you try to sit it out? There’s got to be an employer out there looking for a marketing major,” Wodecki said.

Job offers, however, are down sharply from a year ago.

The National Association of Colleges and Employers, which surveys companies that employ college grads, reported that hiring projections for 2009 are down by 22 percent compared with actual hiring last year.

In the Northeast, that figure swells to 39 percent. Some sectors showed dramatic downturns. Hiring in finance, for instance, is expected to drop 71 percent from last year. Construction hiring is down 45 percent, manufacturing off 32 percent.

“This is the toughest economy I can remember,” said John Nonnamaker, executive director for the office of career services at Providence College. “People remember times in the ’90s when there were downturns, but this is a new animal, like nothing we’ve ever seen. We don’t really have a model to look toward.”

Campus job fairs have been attracting fewer employers this year. Salve Regina University, for example, held a career fair last Wednesday that included about 55 employers, down from about 70 a year ago. The University of Rhode Island has a career fair scheduled for Wednesday. Bobbi Koppel, director of career services, said the university expects around 80 employers, down from the usual 100 or more.

And employers who show up for college job fairs offer fewer jobs. Johnson & Wales University held a career fair on March 19 that drew a full house of 120 employers. But Sheri Ispir, director of career development at Johnson & Wales, said that instead of the 600 job interviews the fair usually generates, this year employers interviewed about half that many students.

Robbin Beauchamp, director of The Career Center at Roger Williams University, said students are also facing competition from people who have recently lost jobs. The career fair at Salve Regina on Wednesday was open to the public, and employers there reported seeing more older job candidates than they had in the past.

“It’s been a mix. But we’ve talked to a lot of people who have been recently laid off and are looking for careers,” said Ashley Kosman of Atrion Networking Corp. “And we’ve been getting résumés from people with 20 years experience and have been laid off.”

FOR MANY college students, the current economic slump represents a good time to go to graduate school to ride out the recession and make themselves more marketable. One of the students at the Salve Regina career fair was Colleen O’Toole, 22, of Boston, who is majoring in English communications with a minor in sports management. O’Toole has chosen to take advantage of a Salve Regina program that allows students to stay in school for an extra year and earn a master’s degree. O’Toole has decided to get her master’s degree in business management.

“I figured business is always a good thing, and the combination of degrees will make me more marketable to employers,” she said. “I actually had a job opportunity, but I think staying in school is better in this economy. I’ll get the master’s while the economy is bad, and come out when it’s better.”

Career placement experts emphasize that there are still some jobs available.

“We have to battle the mentality that there are no jobs,” said URI’s Koppel. “That’s not true. It is harder to find them. There’s more competition. It might take longer. You might have to move farther away than you had thought. But it doesn’t mean there aren’t any jobs.”

Koppel said some economic areas still show promise, among them pharmacy, accounting, health care and energy. The federal government, thanks to funding provided by the federal stimulus plan, can provide employment opportunities, according to college placement officials. On Tuesday, nine Rhode Island colleges participated in a federal job fair at Bryant University that drew about 600 students.

Some Rhode Island seniors are still finding jobs in the private sector. Melissa Callahan, 22, of Westerly, is a communications major at URI who will be working as a sales associate for Carousel Industries, a technology company headquartered in Exeter, although Callahan will be getting her sales training in Windsor, Conn. She graduates May 17 and will report to work June 1.

She said she found the position through a job fair in December. “It was the first booth I went to,” she said. “We just clicked. I did a phone interview and then I went to Windsor for another interview ... it’s exactly what I’m looking for.” Callahan said most of her friends are still looking, without success

“This is the time when you’re supposed to enjoy the last months of school,” she said, “But everyone is really stressed out.”

asmith@projo.com