A record-low 88.2 percent of job-seeking high school graduates found full-time employment this spring, down 1.7 percentage points from a year earlier, according to an Education Ministry survey released Wednesday.
As of March 31, about 32,000 graduates had failed to find jobs, up some 2,000 from a year earlier, the survey said.
For the latest of the annual surveys, which began in 1976, the ministry polled some 270,000 students at private, state-run, prefectural or municipal government-run high schools who were looking for jobs after graduation.