As in most other countries in western Europe, youth unemployment grew continuously in France and Italy throughout the 1970s, in both absolute and relative terms. However, what is perhaps less well-known is the somewhat different recent finding that unemployment among young graduates has, of late, been declining. In Italy, the number of unemployed graduates fell from 71,000 in 1978 to 61,000 in 1981, whereas the non-graduate unemployment total rose from 1,500,000 to 1,852,000: in relative terms, the unemployment rate of graduates aged less than 30 dropped from 28.4% to 22.2% against a rise for the less educated of the same age (ISTAT, 1978, 1979a, 1980, 1981b, pp. 19 and 98). Similarly, in France, the unemployment rate of young graduates entering the labour market in 1980 was less than half the rate for all young people (14% as against 33%), whereas prior to 1974 the two rates had been more or less identical (INSEE, 1972, 1974, 1977, 1980). Moreover, both Italian and French data show that unemployment rates are rising relatively faster among the less educated, providing some support for the 'labour queue' theory, according to which the work supply is ranked by employers on the basis of its anticipated training costs. Educational attainment is considered as providing at least some indication of the extent to which a person will be 'trainable' for professional purposes, with the result that preference is given to the more educated (Thurow, 1975, pp. 75-97). This is also the situation in the United States, where the unemployment rates of the graduate labour force are the lowest, and where the increase in the overall unemployment rate reflects mainly the plight of the less educated (McDougall-Young, 1980). Unemployment rate trends among young people in France and Italy suggest an emerging labour queue in both countries which, in turn, suggests the gradual spread of a phenomenon of under-utilisation. It may be argued that, in Italy as well as in France, the reduction in graduate unemployment (in both absolute and relative terms) has been due not only to the drop in supply reflected, in Italy, in the decrease in the number of degrees awarded which fell from 77,000 in 1978 to 74,000 in 1980 (ISTAT, 1979b, 1981a) but also to a greater number of graduates willing to accept jobs they have traditionally refused. Because data from the Istituto Centrale di Statistica (the Italian central agency for statistical information, elsewhere abbreviated as ISTAT) classified together managers and employees it is impossible to verify this assumption, but it is equally revealing that, in Italy, the percentage of employed diploma holders (of all ages) performing workers' jobs increased from 3.4% in 1970 to 9.2% in 1981 (ISTAT, 1971, 1981b, p. 18). French data relating to new graduate labour market entrants demonstrate this clear phenomenon of 'devaluation' (Bourdieu, 1978; Thevenot,