Spain EU top for graduates overqualified for jobs

SPAIN heads the European Union for the number of university graduates working in jobs for which they are overqualified.

Last year, 37.6 per cent of Spanish graduates were doing work considered below their level of education, the most recent CYD Foundation for Knowledge and Development report reveals.

This compares with an EU average of 23.4 per cent, less than 25 per cent in the UK, and levels of between 14 and 17 per cent in countries like Portugal, Croatia, Hungary, Denmark, Sweden and the Czech Republic.

It is also an increase on the 31 per cent in Spain in 2011.

“There is no magic formula to resolve this situation, but the way is that universities work more closely with companies in order to fit their offer of degrees with market demand”, commented report co-author and Universitat de Barcelona professor of Applied Economics Marti Parellada.

The report explains that the substantial percentage of graduates in Spain working in jobs for which high qualifications are unnecessary was due to the high proportion of 25-64 year olds in the country with a degree (37.3 per cent), five percentage points above the EU average, coupled with a lesser proportion of high qualification jobs available.

Nearly 35 per cent of graduates’ employment contracts in 2018 were for posts which do not require high qualifications, That is, they were contracts for jobs which were not included in the groupings of directors and managers, technicians and scientific and intellectual professionals, according to Public Employment Service information.