With summer less than two months away, many undergraduates are anxiously searching for jobs. But this year, a national and state recession means they are finding their prospects bleak.

Where once employers hired interns and summer associates in droves, the economic downturn has forced college students who once easily found high-paying employment to scrape for opportunities.

"Students are having a very tough summer, especially here," says Mary Fan Kain, summer jobs counselor at the Office of Career Services (OCS). "The economy in the Northeast is impacting on students who want to stay around here this summer. If you can leave and go somewhere else, you will probably find a lot more possibilities."

But the lack of summer employment is not limited to Harvard Square. Students at other institutions in the area, along with undergraduates at universities around the country, have also felt the job crunch.

Shelley Reuger, assistant director of the Student Employment Office at MIT, agrees that the economy in Massachusetts is causing problems for undergraduates trying to secure off-campus jobs--especially for students who want to work in their hometowns.

Although it is "pretty easy" to find on-campus work, Reuger says, "companies that work in scientific fields are difficult to find jobs in." She cited areas such as mechanical engineering as the most competitive, with job possibilities in that field almost non-existent.

But Rueger is more optimistic than most counselors about the job situation and thinks that on-campus jobs provide a reasonable alternative to the outside competition.

"The general job situation has picked up since March," she says. "Office work is still easy to find. Technical jobs are holding steady with last year. And it's not a panic situation yet for students who want to work on campus."

But even so, Rueger says, the difficulties that have plagued students around the country are indeed being felt here in the Boston area.

"I saw a Northwestern career counselor and a graduating senior on 'The Today Show' the other day bemoaning the fact that selections are few and opportunities are more difficult," Harvard's Kain says. "I think this filters down to undergraduates as well."

She also adds that the job shortage has not been as acute in some areas of the nation. The summer jobs counselor cited the Northwest, in particular the Seattle area, as a region where more favorable economic conditions has made finding opportunities feasible.

In addition, Kain notes that "cities in the Midwest are coming around again, especially Minneapolis."

Employment counselors for the most part agree that the national recession has made the summer job search much more difficult than it has been in several years.

"This is the toughest summer in a fairly long time," agrees Marcie Homer, director of the Harvard Student Employment Office (SEO). "Few employers and jobs are available in the Boston area and across the country as well."

Homer also notes that the SEO had begun to see a shortage of jobs for undergraduates last summer, but conditions have worsened. Although on-campus research programs have provided jobs for some students, these opportunities constitute only about "one-half to one-third of what students need in the summer," she says. For example, the college work-study program has accepted only half the number of applicants it did last year.