Sunday, May 03, 2009

Let's Look to China

The Wall Street Journal Education section is reporting that unemployed university graduates are ballooning to critical levels in China, just as the country suffers its worst economic slump in two decades. Up to one-third of last year's 5.6 million university graduates are still looking for work, and this year will see another 6.1 million hit the labour market. Ireland is suffering from a similar predicament (albeit on a different scale) so it will be worth following how China navigates through this.

1 comment:

Liam Delaney said...

China is interesting in its own right and I will be watching with interest how it responds to this. Its unlikely to be a good template for Ireland given the massive differences in the structure and nature of the two economies. I would strongly welcome posts on the blog about any initiatives from around the globe on graduate unemployment - there is a lot of work on youth unemployment but it rarely focuses on graduate unemployment as this has not a big social issue to date. Looking to papers on previous recessions just isn't going to be that informative for this issue. I am open to correction but I cannot think of any previous recession in any country that hit graduates to the same extent in the abscence of a viable migration adjustment channel.