SHOCK NEW FIGURES SHOW EXTENT OF THE ‘GRADUATE PROBLEM’
Official statistics have revealed that 20% of recent graduates are unemployed.
This means that the proportion of joblessness among this group has almost doubled in the last decade.
And graduates seem to have been hit harder than other sectors of the workforce.
At the start of the recession, unemployment for new graduates was 10.6%. It is now 18.5%. Comparable stats for the rest of the population showed that unemployment rose from 5.2% to 7.9%.
In other words, new graduates are more than twice as likely to be unemployed than the rest of the population.
The only group hit harder was 21-24-year-olds without degrees, who are even less likely to be in work.
Aaron Porter, president of the NUS, had some harsh words for the government, as he called for the Future Jobs Fund – scrapped last year – to be reinstated. He said:
“Graduates are encountering and exceptionally hostile jobs market and the government persists with policies that put the burden of the country’s debt on the young.”
Universities minister David Willett provided a typically useless response, saying:
“We are making sure all universities focus on employability of students and are working with employers to encourage work experience and internships.”
Work experience and internships. Brilliant. Will those be PAID, Willetts? Because otherwise they’re not much of a solution, are they?
Pull your finger out, man – our nation’s graduates demand it.
These figures don’t take into account the record numbers of graduates working for nothing. Among my substantial club of unemployed friends we are all active in doing some form of volunteering or unpaid work.
These statistics, I suspect, are manipulated to present graduate employment in a more favourable aspect than its reality.
The reality of work for today’s graduates is paid-time, uncontracted and likely to be erratic days/hours. And not in graduate level positions.
If I remember rightly, they send the survey out six months after graduation and only ask if you are working / volunteering / unemployed.
So you could be working unpaid yet classify as in work. It is also unable to take into consideration the vicarious nature of 2011’s job market.
When I filled in this survey I classified as in work, but the ‘job’ (actually volunteering) finished a month after.
Anecdotally I know the situation to be a lot worse
Agree with Joddle, this sad fact is alas not limited to the UK alone. Lots of European companies that operate here from South Africa seem to delight in following this process by recruiting post grads for nothing! A process we do not agree with.
young generation is being screwed! does any politician care? No. Does anyone care? No
Why is this happening?! research on “new world order”