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Distinguished members of the faculty, honored guests, proud parents and college graduates – as I look across this sea of eager young faces, I’m reminded that we don’t have any jobs for you. Maybe we should have mentioned this sooner, but you seemed so happy, with your video games and all.

Just four short years ago, as you entered college, we were worried about running out of workers here in Iowa.

That’s real-world lesson No. 1: Predictions are always wrong.

Now, as you bid farewell to your alma mater and try to convince your landlord that those holes were already in the walls when you moved in, you may fear that higher education hasn’t helped you at all. But you’re forgetting one thing: Now you have a collection of college T-shirts. Treasure them. Millions of less fortunate people have to go through life without a single piece of mascot-based apparel.

Out here in the corporate world, we don’t mind if you come in for job interviews, especially on Friday afternoons, when it’s hard to concentrate. It’s just that we don’t have any openings. Oh, we have more work to do than ever before, and fewer employees, but we’ve revisited the concept of “productivity.” Perhaps it was mentioned in an economics class while you were on Facebook.

We used to think that we had to increase the number of workers as the workload grew. Now we’ve learned that people can be driven much harder than the unions would have us believe. Maybe someday we’ll need to hire more bodies, but we still have plenty of motivational techniques to try, many involving electrodes.

So, yes, there is a job shortage, and that’s why most of you are boomeranging home. After four years of intense study, your first adult challenge will be arranging a new set of posters on the walls of your childhood bedroom. Good thing you took that design class.

A recent report by something called CollegeGrad.com found that 80 percent of 2009 U.S. college graduates moved home after graduation, up from 77 percent in 2008, 73 percent in 2007 and 67 percent in 2006.

In the old days, we had a term for the kids who returned home after graduation. We called them farmers. They always knew what they wanted to do with their lives; they went to college only to meet sturdy young women and ponder avant-garde theories about only baling hay if it really wants to be baled.

The rest of us diligently attended classes with a fierce desire to better ourselves and acquire career skills. Unless it was raining or kind of chilly.

After graduation, you were expected to find a job and an apartment. It was part of growing up. It was the next step in the journey. Besides, our parents had filled our old rooms with bricks, which seemed like a hint.

You may find some solace in knowing that what you’re facing is more than an American phenomenon. In England, it’s reported that almost one in five graduates in their late 20s live with their parents. “By contrast, only one in eight university graduates had failed to fly the nest by the same age 20 years ago, research from the Office for National Statistics shows,” according to the Daily Telegraph.

The researchers also found that “grown-up sons are twice as likely as their sisters to still be living with their parents in their late 20s.” The lesson? See if you can find a job compiling statistics about people who can’t find jobs.

In closing, I encourage you to remain determined. Never give up on your hopes for a rewarding career. Keep adding skills and making contacts.

The economy is hesitant and confused right now, like a philosophy professor who has wandered into the weight room, but it will recover. It will boom again, and we’ll need every one of you to contribute.

Of course, that’s just a prediction. It could be wrong.