Government should grapple with graduate employment crunch
(From The Japan Times August 23 issue)

若者の雇用に向け支援策を示せ

The education ministry's survey of schools as of May 1 sheds light on the difficulties that high school and university graduates are encountering in the job market. The government and the corporate sector should take a serious look at the results of the annual survey, which were made public Aug. 5, and consider ways to increase employment.

At universities, there were a record 2.559 million undergraduate students and a record 271,000 graduate students as of May 1 — an increase of 32,000 and 7,000 from the year before, respectively. In April, a record 54.4 percent of high school graduates directly went on to four-year universities, two-year colleges or other schools of higher education.

But of this year's high school graduates, only 15.8 percent were able to find jobs — a drop of 2.4 percentage points from fiscal 2009. Only 329,000 university graduates, or 60.8 percent, found employment — a drop of 7.6 points from fiscal 2009, the largest yearly drop since the survey was started in fiscal 1948. Some 19,000 university graduates, or 3.6 percent, chose to take temporary jobs such as part-time work — an increase of 6,000 from fiscal 2009.

The future course of 87,000 university graduates, or 16.1 percent, was undecided — meaning that they neither found employment nor went on to graduate school.

Clearly, the government should help the corporate sector with investment in areas where growth can be expected to help create new jobs. Enterprises should rethink their traditional reluctance to hire people who are not among the most recent graduates.

Universities, for their part, must improve career education by motivating students from an early stage to find out what kinds of jobs they are interested in and to make the necessary preparations. They also must gather ample employment-related information and offer it to students.

高校･大学の卒業生の就職の厳しさが文科省の学校基本調査で浮き彫りになった。政府と企業は雇用を増やす努力をすべきだ。

しかし高卒の就職率は15.8%、大卒は60.8%とともに前年度比減で、後者は過去最大の下げ幅に。大卒の3.6%はアルバイトなど一時的な仕事に就き、進学も就職もしない卒業生は16%だ。政府は成長が見込める部門への企業の投資を援助することで雇用を増やす必要がある。企業が新卒採用へのこだわりを見直すことも重要だ。

一方で大学側は、学生が早い時期に希望の職種を見つけ準備できるよう職業教育の充実化を図り、豊富な就職関連情報を提供できるよう尽力すべきだ。