Spanish graduates are the Europeans who take more time to find their first job. The time of search reaches 11.6 months, which almost doubles the European average, 6.1 months. Likewise, 18 per cent of the Spanish graduates remain unemployed four years after finishing their course; whereas the European average, including Spain, is 5 per cent. The second country with more university unemployed persons is Italy, with 9 per cent; this is, half as many as Spain, according to the “Cheers” survey, a study coordinated by Ulrich Teichler, professor of the University of Kassel, in Germany, and head of the European Research Centre for Higher Education and Employment. In the study, carried out in 12 countries, they analyse the transition period between the time they finished their studies until they found their first job, as well as the most relevant conditions of such first jobs.
According to the authors of the book “Higher education and employment: the situation of young graduates in Europe”, which has just been published by the University of Granada, the figures referring to Spain contrast with the Nordic countries and Germany, as there almost 50% of the graduates find a job immediately after having finished their studies, and 80% find their first job after just three months. According to the professors of the University of Granada Juan de Dios Jiménez Aguilera, José Sánchez Campillo and Roberto Montero Granados, “if we consider the graduates who take more than six months to find a job, the most unfavourable figures again go to Spain and France, with 41 and 34 per cent, respectively.”
On the other hand, this labour market situation of the Spanish newly graduates has been corroborated by other sources that, according to the authors of the book, “indicate that the average unemployment among the young until the age of 29 years old, reached in 1995 a 11.9 per cent in the European Union, whereas in Spain this index triples, reaching 33.2 per cent.”
The data of the “Cheers” study reveal, always according to the professors of the University of Granada Juan de Dios Jiménez Aguilera, José Sánchez Campillo and Roberto Montero Granados, “a relative excess of university students in Spain with regard to other similar countries. Such excess can have been provoked by a wrong university policy on the part of the Central State or the Autonomous Regions with educational competences, which has provoked an excess of supply, or by an excess of demand on the part of a population who, in view of a high unemployment panorama, considers the studies, including university, as a way to invest a time at a low-opportunity cost, which can be corroborated by the fact that a great percentage of graduates keeps studying although most of them already are over-education.”
Further information:
Dpt of Applied Economics. University of Granada.
Prof Juan de Dios Jiménez Aguilera. Phone number: 958 243718. E-mail: juande@ugr.es
Prof José Sánchez Campillo. Phone number: 958 249916. E-mail.:jsanchez@ugr.es
Prof Roberto Montero Granados. Phone number: 958 249996. E-mail: monterog@ugr.es
Tel Of the secretary office of the Dpt of Applied Economics: 958 243465.
