You would have to be living under a rock to have escaped the labour market story of the past year: the great graduate unemployment crunch. Long used to weathering economic storms better than their uncredentialled contemporaries, recent recipients of a degree have found joblessness climbing more steeply lately than those without one, from the US to Europe.
But what if this tale of graduate-specific woe is off-beam, based on a misguided analysis of the data? What if the accompanying narratives that seek to explain why the most educated are faring especially badly are focused on a mirage?
To set the scene: we know that rising unemployment is mainly down to weak hiring, not job losses. This dynamic is particularly important for new entrants to the labour market. Analysis of joblessness among recent US graduates confirms this: the rise is almost exclusively accounted for by the struggles of those freshly out of the education system.