Young people who earn jobs or internships with the NSA are generally in the tops of their classes. While they aren't immune to the recession, they have more prospects than the average grad, and employers sometimes compete for them.
I couldn't find any publicly available data about NSA recruitment, but there are some interesting anecdotes to show that the NSA is having a harder time recruiting top-notch students:
Lets not forget that many NSA "employees" are actually contractors from companies like Booz Allen Hamilton. Also Palantir doesn't seem to be hurting finding people to build surveillance technology.