Associated Press - November 16, 2009 4:34 PM ET

LANSING, Mich. (AP) - Businesses hired far fewer college graduates in the past year than they thought they would, and next year's graduates will have to be "patient and persistent" to land a job.

Those are some of the findings of Michigan State University's annual recruiting trends report released Monday.

The survey of 2,500 companies nationwide shows the job market for college graduates dropped 40 percent in the past year. Overall hiring is expected to be down another 2 percent in 2010.

The companies most likely to hire recent college graduates are those with 500 or fewer employees.

Sectors that could prove hot are e-commerce, agriculture production and food processing, environmental sciences, information systems, manufacturing, nonprofits, statistics, nursing, social work, multimedia and Web design.

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