The global unemployment rate is almost three times higher for people without a college degree, according to the latest Education at Glance report from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
This latest version of Education at a Glance measures statistics through the year 2011. Overall, worldwide college graduates experienced only 5% unemployment in 2011 among member countries and non-graduates experienced 13% unemployment. The OECD is made up of 34 countries – mostly those with highly advanced economies such as the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany.
OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurría said good educational qualifications are “essential” for young people today. “Governments must ensure that investment in education does not fall as a result of the crisis,” said Gurria. The overall rate of college education attainment has increased by nearly 10 percentage points in OECD countries since 2000.
Vocational training has been an important factor in keeping the unemployment rate down during the recession. The OECD said an average of 11% of young people in member countries will finish a vocationally oriented education in their lifetime. The number of students graduating from vocational programs has risen 4.3% between 2005 and 2011.
OECD countries with a higher than average proportion of vocational graduates, such as Germany and Switzerland, experienced lower unemployment among young workers aged 25-34. Women are more likely to complete such programs, with 13 percent of women and 10 percent of men graduating from them in 2011.
The OECD found a high earnings premium for college graduates in all the countries for which data is available. According to the report, non-graduates aged 25-34 earned only 80% of the income of college graduates in that age group during the years 2000-2011. And the premium seems to increase with the age of the worker. Those non-graduates aged 55-64 earned only 72% of their college graduate peers during the same period.
College-educated workers fared much better in the area of employment than their peers without a degree during the recessionary years of 2008-2011 across all the OECD countries, including the United States. The OECD’s Country Note report on the United States found that unemployment for those without a college education rose to 16.2% in 2011, compared with less than 5% for college-educated Americans.
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