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KILM 11. Unemployment by educational attainment
Introduction
This indicator focuses on unemployment among workers categorized by their level of educational attainment. Specifically, the indicator is the percentage distribution of an economy's total unemployed according to five levels of schooling - less than one year, less than primary level, primary level, secondary level and tertiary level. Information for the indicator is given in table 11 for 105 economies, to some extent. Coverage for the indicator is sparse for sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and North Africa. Many economies of Asia and the Pacific are missing as well. For a minority of the economies presented, observations for one year only have been obtained; for most, however, several years are shown.
Trends
Figure 11a. Ratio of unemployed to labour force by level of educational attainment, selected economies, 2001
Comparing table 11 with table 14 on the size of the labour force by educational attainment allows the level of unemployment by educational attainment to be related to the size of the labour force having that level of education, and improves understanding of how unemployment is distributed in the economy. Dividing the unemployment share for a given level of educational attainment by that level's share of the labour force gives a ratio above, at or below unity. A ratio below unity would imply that the population with the given education level is faring better in employment terms than its share of the labour force might imply. Figure 11a shows that the distribution of unemployment is more concentrated among the least educated, at least in the wealthier economies. Only in the transition economies of Lithuania and Romania are workers with secondary education more likely to be unemployed. The demand for more highly educated workers is confirmed by the below-unity ratio for this group in all the economies depicted.
Figure 11b. Share of total unemployment by educational attainment, males and females, 2001
When male and female unemployment by level of educational attainment is compared, there are clear differences between economies of otherwise similar levels of economic development. Unemployment is quite evenly distributed between men and women with a secondary education in most economies, but at the tertiary level of education greater country-level diversity is apparent. In all the economies shown , females with higher education levels are more often unemployed than males of the same education group. On the other hand, with the exception of Peru, men with low education levels have higher unemployment rates than females in all economies. In Israel, the share of the male unemployed who had attained only primary education (27 per cent) was nearly twice that of the female unemployed (14 per cent).
