While research reveals that the pool of open entry-level positions in the United States is larger now than it was last year, with many concentrated in 25 cities across the nation, other data indicate that college graduates vying for these jobs face a highly competitive landscape of their peers.

Data from CollegeGrad.com, an entry-level job site, show that just 25 cities, together, are home to more than 34,000 of the jobs for entry-level seekers in the United States. New York, Los Angeles, Houston, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, in this order, top CollegeGrad.com's list.

To gain insight into the entry-level job market, overall, and the behavior of yet-to-be employed college graduates entering it, MonsterTRAK, the student division of Monster.com, has released findings from a survey of 2,545 students and 985 companies. Results suggest that many employers are bullish about their businesses and plan to hire accordingly, but are also inundated by applicants competing for these jobs.

At the time of MonsterTRAK's poll in early April, nearly 40% of these companies said that they were planning to recruit more entry-level candidates than they did in 2006. Furthermore, 76% were planning to hire this year's graduates in the spring or summer, an increase over 72% for the same time period last year. But employers participating in the poll were also anticipating 73 applications, on average, in response to each available entry-level position—positions for which 63% of poll participants anticipate no increase in wages over the previous year.

Facing this situation, many students are still looking for that first job. The fifth annual College Graduate Career Survey from Experience, Inc., a career site for college students and alumni, provides additional insight. More than 2,800 graduating seniors took Experience's online poll, and nearly 50% of those who had already started their job searches at the time of the survey were still looking. The results, released in early April, also showed that only 22% of these students had offers in hand. Another 15% planned to continue on to graduate school, and 10% had yet to begin searching.