About 118,900 college graduates could not find jobs, an increase of over 2,000 since last year, according to released figures.
By contrast, the number of jobless intermediate school graduates witnessed a downward trend. Only about 60,200 people in this category were unemployed, a small bright spot in this quarter's labour bulletin.
The first quarter labour information also showed that 53.29 million have jobs nationwide, a decrease of 211,120 people compared to the final quarter of last year.
Deputy Minister Mau blamed the situation on the slowing economy in the first quarter of this year, which has had a direct impact on the job market.
There has been a reduction of about 1.23 per cent in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in agriculture, forestry and seafood. This has put these sectors at the top of the list of those suffering from job losses, along with processing and manufacturing industries, as well as those firms that repair, and perform wholesale and retail sales of automobiles, motorbikes and engines.