Only 68.8 percent of university students had found jobs as of Dec. 1 before their graduation this March, down 4.3 percentage points from a year earlier and the lowest level since 1996, when officials first started compiling comparable data.
It is the first time the percentage, compiled in an annual survey, sank below the 70 percent line at this stage of polling.
For graduating junior college students, the figure stood at 45.3 percent, also a record low and down 2.1 percentage points, the poll by the labor and education ministries found.