Nelson Chiu shook hands with the PepsiCo representative, exchanged a few brief words and received a parting “good luck.”

He was dressed in a crisp, dark blue pinstripe suit on a recent Wednesday, and his voice was starting to fade; he’d been at a career fair inside the University of California, Davis, field house since 11 a.m., talked to more than a dozen companies, and it was closing in on 2 p.m. on his daughter’s first birthday.

For Chiu, who earned his Master of Business Administration in 2009 from UC Davis’ highly regarded Graduate School of Management, a solid lead would have been a great gift.

For years, someone like Chiu with a newly minted degree from a top-flight business or law school had the closest thing to a golden ticket for a high-paying job. But the ongoing recession has brought graduates – many staggering under mountains of student loan debt – face to face with a new economic reality.

For most of the past decade, markets for both groups of grads were humming: 10 percent to 20 percent growth per year for MBA graduates, according to the non-profit Graduate Management Admission Council; a 10-year stretch of near-90 percent job placement for law grads, the National Association for Law Placement reported.

But those days seem like ancient history now.

“The biggest challenge is the people who’ve been laid off with the same degree and with a lot more experience,” the 31-year-old Chiu said. “There are too many applicants and not enough career opportunities right now.”

Companies that hired 12 MBAs on average in 2008 hired fewer than six in 2009, the GMAC reported.

Nearly 80 percent of employers scaled back on-campus recruiting of MBAs in fall 2009, while nearly half reported a decline in full-time MBA job postings, according to the MBA Career Services Council, which tracks MBA hiring.

James Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, had two words to describe the market for law school grads:

“It tanked,” he said. “The pipeline is clogged up.”

A student-recruiting survey released this month by the association was not encouraging.

Second-year law students received far fewer offers of summer internships – the traditional gateway to a firm – in 2009 than in 2008. Law firms cut back sharply on recruiting. Grads who received offers were often told the job wouldn’t start for months.

“For the class of 2009, the largest impact was the deferral phenomenon,” Leipold said. Some grads still await their start dates.

Much like their business clients, law firms are fretting about their overhead as they try to mind the bottom line.

For anxious and jobless graduates saddled with debt, the timing couldn’t be worse.

Law school students borrow an average of more than $80,000 for a private school and more than $54,000 for a public school, according to the NALP, though executive director Leipold said “the averages mask the highs.”

Leipold said law schools are aware of the pressure on grads, so much so that 42 percent of surveyed schools had created jobs for them.

“That’s huge,” Leipold said, his voice rising for emphasis.

“They’re trying to create their own relief packages.”