[Monitor] 1 in 3 unemployed are college graduates

The number of four-year university graduates without jobs surpassed 300,000 for the first time in the third quarter this year, taking up over 30 percent of the entire unemployment rate for the first time, Statistics Korea said Monday.

A total of 985,000 were unemployed in the period, with 315,000 of them holding degrees from four-year universities. It is the first time that the figure has topped the 300,000 mark since 1999.

The rising unemployment among college graduates is due to the combination of a protracted economic slowdown and what the agency officials called “academic inflation.”