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Unemployment not too bad for the young and highly-educated

The economic crisis has not yet hit young and highly-educated people too badly, most of whom were able to find a job in 2011. However, the situation may worsen in the coming years.

Newly released statistics concerning youths between the ages of 25 and 35 show that 4.1 percent of university graduates and 3.3 percent of applied sciences university graduates were unemployed; these were in search of a job but could not find any. Another 6 and 7.8 percent respectively who were jobless stated that they did not go job-hunting. The job situation had indeed gone downhill in the last ten years. In 2002 and 2003, the Netherlands went through a minor recession, much smaller than the current economic crisis. Unemployment at that time affected mainly the less-educated, although the highly-educated also had a hard time. In 2005, only 86 percent of young university graduates had a job; the unemployment rate among them was 4.4 percent officially. The worst period for graduates from applied sciences universities was in 2003 when 3.6 percent were jobless and 88.2 percent were employed. ‘We have to wait and see how things develop,’ says a spokesperson from Statistics Netherlands. ‘We expect an increase of more than a hundred thousand unemployed, but these will mainly be the less-educated. Highly-educated people will be able to find a job easier; if need be, they can work below their level for a while.’

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