alt Hacker NewsI live in Finland, with over 10% unemployment according to official statistics (second highest in EU, just after Spain). From what I can tell, things really suck especially for fresh grads. There's fierce competition for jobs like cashier at supermarket, hundreds of applications for one position is normal. Lots of fresh grads with bachelor's or master's degree compete for those jobs too, since they can't find anything better. Also, of the few open positions, many are the kind of "rental work" that offer only limited hours a week, at unpredictable times.
So, this is what an objectively bad job market looks like in Europe.
Is having temporarily high unemployment that bad? Sure, demand is not as sky high as it used to be but doesn't mean people won't get a proper job eventually.
Imo it shows that you consider your people valuable and have a strong social safety net, so people are not forced to accept the first job that comes their way and compromise on pay or what you want to do.
I'm sure those grads could get underpaid crappy jobs the next day if they had to, but the point is they're not forced to.
If you can't sort this out in a couple years, then you have a real problem.