One person out of three who graduated from university in the past six years is in a job requiring only the skills of a school-leaver, up from one in four a decade ago. A 21-year-old university graduate is as likely to be unemployed in the year he leaves full-time education as a 16-year-old school-leaver. The official figures depress those young people hoping that the better job higher education is meant to assure them will pay back the sums they have loaned for college. This is not all a consequence of the recession. The proportion of university graduates in lower-skilled jobs was rising even before economic growth reversed in 2008; the downturn just steepened the slope. The laws of supply and demand are one reason. But if the outlook for graduates is dim, it is far worse for their less-educated counterparts. Though about a quarter of both university graduates and school-leavers are unemployed for a while when they leave full-time study, in two years less than 9% of graduates are still looking for work, compared with almost 27% of school-leavers.