One Third of Graduates on Low Skilled Jobs

More than a third of recent graduates who have found a job are doing ‘low skilled’ work such as being a cleaner or a postman, official figures revealed today.

The figures, from the Office for National Statistics, highlight the nightmare facing graduates who are struggling to get a decent job at a time or rising unemployment.

In 2001, just 26.7 per cent of recent graduates, who had left university within the last six years and found a job, were doing ‘low skilled’ jobs.

These include being a hotel porter, a catering assistant, a driver, a carer, a shop assistant, a secretary, as well as a cleaner or a postman.

 

By 2011, the figure had jumped to 35.9 per cent, which means more than one in three graduates with a job are doing one which they could have got if they had left school at 16.

If these are the prospects of geting a Degree then is it worth it when going leaves you with a huge debt and earning low skilled jobs that you would have earned anyways. 

Tanya de Grunwald, founder of Graduate Fog, the careers website for university leavers, said she hears from graduates who are ‘desperately struggling to find work’ every day.

She said: ‘Some even delete their degree from their CV to boost their chances of getting jobs in pubs and cafes.

‘Most are searching high and low and would take anything that was offered to them.

‘More often than not, employers do not even bother to write and tell them they had not got the job. They simply never hear back.’

Miss de Grunwald added: ‘We must ask whether it is right that schools, politicians and universities are still urging so many people to do a degree when many will later discover it was not a wise investment for them.’ 

It will fuel major concerns among parents and their children about whether a degree is worthwhile at a time when students starting university will leave with debts of up to £50,000.

While many of their parents enjoyed a free university education, their children who will start this autumn are facing tuition fees of up to £9,000 a year.
It also raises serious doubts about Labour’s famous pledge to get 50 per cent of school leavers to go to university.

But does one not go to university because there are no oppotunities. People should go to university to learn and enjoy what their learning. But doing a degree like Art or history will not increase your chances of getting a decent job. 

The problem will become that no one will want to do a degree and will only be left with unemployed people because all the low-skilled jobs are gone and all the skilled graduates are emigrating to other places of the world were they can get a job. Hence the debts won't get paid back. 

How did it get so bad. At one point an education was the way to make something of yourself but now that is not even available.