Good news on job prospects for MBA graduates

Amid today's dismal jobs report comes positive news about the job market for MBA graduates.

After two years of sharp declines in hiring, M.B.A. students are having more success landing jobs, and getting them earlier, than during the depths of the financial crisis....
While there remain some pockets of weakness in industries such as health care, hiring at many traditional career destinations for M.B.A. graduates, including finance and consulting, are nearing pre-recession levels. Hiring is up by double-digits at consulting firms such as Bain & Co. and Accenture PLC, compared with 2008 troughs. Similar gains are being seen at financial-services companies, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Morgan Stanley.
Overall, 57% of full-time M.B.A. students in the U.S. had offers by mid-March, compared with 40% a year earlier, according to a Graduate Management Admission Council survey released last month of 905 companies and 127 business schools nationwide. And the improvement continues as the latest school year closes out.

Among the business schools reporting positive hiring results are Cornell, UVA and Michigan.

As more financial-services and consulting companies come back to campuses, competition for M.B.A. talent is also pushing salaries higher—though not quite in line with inflation. The average starting salary is expected to be to $91,433 this year, according to the GMAC survey.

This should be good news for all the parents paying for their children's MBA degrees.