The report includes an analysis of unemployment rates and level of education by Autonomous Community and in the US, UK, Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. In six autonomous communities (Asturias, Castilla La Mancha, Navarra, Basque Country, La Rioja, Ceuta, Melilla) the unemployment rate among active population with postgraduate studies was 0.0% last year. In the case of Andalucía, Aragón, Cantabria, Catalonia, Comunidad  Valenciana, Extremadura, Galicia, Madrid and Murcia, the unemployment rates for active population with postgraduate studies are substantially lower than the unemployment rates of the active population with basic university degrees.

“The data corroborates a clear trend: postgraduate studies increasingly contribute to escaping long queues at the unemployment office. So, given that over the last few months finding employment has become even harder, one of the solutions for escaping the long unemployment queues might be to acquire the right training and education”, says Mario V. González, director of the Study. Two EAE students have collaborated in the study: André Piñero from the Executive MBA and Marta Santa Basilisa San Bruno from the Masters in Marketing Management.

The conclusions to be drawn from the research are as follows:

• The greater the level of education of the workforce, the greater their opportunities and the better their work conditions.

 It is not only experts who coincide in pointing at specialised education and training applied to job positions as one of the determining factors in salary differences and especially personnel recruitment; statistics also show that unemployment rates among those that are less educated are significantly higher than among those that are more qualified.

• Postgraduate studies provide quantifiable and significant benefits to people's level of employability.
  
• The benefits provided by postgraduate studies are not exclusive to a given type of markets or economy, but instead are present in different countries and regions across the world.

The empirical evidence presented for Anglo-Saxon job markets (United States and United Kingdom), as well as for Latin America and Spain corroborates the importance of these benefits, even when the structural, economic and social differences between these countries and regions are clear and in certain cases notable. In other words, the benefits provided by a postgraduate degree in the employability of the workforce are solid in geographic, structural and socio-economic terms.

• The benefits provided by postgraduate studies are still present even in unfavourable financial conditions.

Especially in the case of Spain and Mexico, the differences in work opportunities between those holding a postgraduate degree and those without one are still significant and important, even in recent months when the adverse effects of the financial crisis have filtered through to the job markets. In the case of Spain, it is possible to appreciate and quantify the loss of employment suffered by those without postgraduate degrees in comparison to those who do hold such degrees.

• In Spain, the differences in the levels of employment and unemployment among the sector of population with basic university studies and the sector with postgraduate studies have been increasing over recent years.

The analysis of the evolution of quarterly employment and unemployment rates for the 2005-2008 period and the calculation of the underlying trend shows us that during last year, when financial conditions worsened, job opportunities for people with basic university studies deteriorated whereas opportunities for those with postgraduate degrees established themselves in this scenario and seem to have consolidated their place in the market.