The unemployment rate for new graduates was 20% in the third quarter of 2010, almost double the rate in the last quarter before the recent recession, according to new figures published by the Office for National Statistics.
This was the highest unemployment rate for new graduates in over a decade, with almost one in five recent graduates, who were looking and available for work, but were unable to find any. The rate before the start of the recession, in Q1 of 2008, stood at 10.6%.
Over this period unemployment increased faster for new graduates compared with the UK as a whole. Just before the start of the recession the unemployment rate for new graduates was around twice that of the UK as a whole (10.6% compared with 5.2%). By the end of the recession the rate for new graduates was 2.3 times higher (18.5% compared with 7.9%).
However, for those who graduated between two and six years ago, the unemployment rate rose more slowly than for the recent graduates.
