Many soon-to-graduate university students have not yet found jobs. According to a survey by the education and labor ministries, as of Oct. 1, 2010, only 57.6 percent of university students scheduled to graduate this spring have secured jobs. The figure is a record low and below the figure of slightly above 60 percent prevailing around 2003, a period dubbed the job-hunting ice age.
The government should pay attention to the fact that the unemployment rate among youths aged 15 to 24 is high. In November, their unemployment rate was 8.7 percent — up 0.3 percentage point from a year before. There were some 140,000 youths in the age group who could not find jobs at the time of graduation. They accounted for about 30 percent of the unemployed in the age group.
In an attempt to increase employment among young people, the government will provide subsidies to companies that employ university graduates whose graduation date was up to three years earlier.