Britain: Graduate Unemployment to Soar
November 4th, 2009Via: Guardian:
Graduate unemployment in Britain will soar over the coming years as the public sector, which employs 52% of university leavers, slashes thousands of jobs, a leading thinktank said today.
Centre for Cities said that graduates would find it harder to get work in the public sector, where up to 290,000 jobs were expected to be lost between 2009 and 2014. It said that unless more highly skilled jobs could be generated in the private sector, cities would continue to see graduate unemployment rise.
Dermot Finch, chief executive of Centre for Cities, said: “In a public spending squeeze UK graduates will continue to find it tough to take their first step on the employment ladder. The public sector will not drive graduate jobs growth over the next decade. This means more private sector job opportunities will be needed to bridge the gap.”
Cities and towns such as Swansea, Hastings, Ipswich, Newcastle and Barnsley, which have experienced large public sector growth over the last decade, would need to prepare for significant cutbacks in the size of this workforce, according to Centre for Cities.
It’s OK though, other European countries are apparently already coming out of recession, so we could see a swift brain drain of graduate talent.
What creeps me out is the notion that the UK governments employ more than half of university graduates. *shudder*