Post September 11th, and in the midst of the current economic turmoil, for someone still at school the idea of plotting a career path probably seems like an utterly naive thing to do, writes Emmet Oliver

Imagine the difficulty of the task. Sitting down at the tender age of 17 or 18 to plot your career at a time of such deep uncertainty that not even the most confident and self-assured of economists, politicans or central bankers can predict where the world economy will be in three months, never mind three years.

September 11th and the preceding economic turmoil have made even educated guesses almost impossible. For someone still in school, the idea of plotting a career path probably seems like an utterly naive thing to do at the moment.

But the world will not stop to let you off and students have no choice but to make educated guesses based on hunches, half- truths and a few tiny scraps of information.

UCD, the biggest university in the State, has already warned that September 11th and the events which have flown from it, has radically affected the jobs market. The meltdown in hi-tech firms which took place before the twin towers catastrophe has added further uncertainty.

Colm Tobin, head of the college's careers and appointments office, says in his most recent report that while the figures for 2000 were good, "since then there has been a noticeable downturn in the information technology sector - and financial uncertainty may make graduate job hunting more difficult in 2002".

This does not mean there will be a dearth of jobs over the next few months and years but that students will have to work harder to get them, will sometimes have to settle for slightly less than their ideal choice and will have to settle for lower starting salaries.

He says the hunt for jobs will no longer be a leisurely activity engaged in by students in the last few days of their final year. It will be work to be done throughout their college careers, with information and research becoming the essential skills.

Admissions officers told College Choice that the biggest threat to job availability for graduates in the medium term may not necessarily be job cuts at firms, but recruitment freezes.

This is already the case at several multinational firms in the Republic who are either doing no recruitment or just hiring people for specialist roles.

But that is now. What is the climate going to be like in a few years. Who knows? It depends which expert or experts you consult.

The Government's main advisory body on future labour trends, the Expert Group on Future Skills Needs, chaired by the former president of DCU, Dr Danny O'Hare, says demand for labour will continue in the future at high levels.

The group says while the stagnancy in the US will impact on job growth in the hi-tech sector here, there will still be an overall increase in the number of jobs created in Ireland.

However this prediction was made in June. Since then Minister for Education Dr Woods has said this group will have to scale back its previously rosy forecasts.

But while this suggests things will be less than healthy a few years from now, what could help the students reading this is the fall-off in the student population.

The expert group predicts that the number of school-leavers will drop by 15 per cent between now and 2005 alone. This will shrink the potential pool of employees and should benefit everyone, except colleges themselves who will have to hunt hard for students.

In terms of sectors the picture is a little bit more complex. In recent years there had been a fall in the number of students staying on to do further study, but this has begun to stabilise as the labour market decrees (at least in some areas) that a postgraduate qualification is needed.

In the mid-1990s there appeared to be a tendency among students to edge towards shorter courses, particularly when it came to degrees. Students seemed to want to hot-foot it into the labour market where mind-boggling starting salaries and perks were waiting for them.

This meant sizeable reductions in first preference CAO applications for courses such as medicine, veterinary, dentistry and pharmacy.

These high-points courses were seen by many as too arduous when there were easier options (at least in terms of length of course) elsewhere. Business degrees for example have grown in popularity as areas like medicine and veterinary have slid.

What will be interesting now is whether the old professions regain some of their lustre as the winds of economic recession swirl around the third-level system.

State jobs such as teaching and the civil service have been in crisis in recent years, according to some commentators, but job security, their one outstanding feature, may make them popular once more, as the supposedly stylish but precarious areas like IT, media, arts take a back seat.