The ministry said 225,500 people with a bachelor's or master's degree are currently without a job, up 13.3% from the last quarter.
Duong Duc Lan, director of the Vocational Training Department at the labor ministry, suggested that the country may have more degree holders than it needs.
Vietnam has around one million high school graduates every year and only around 3% of them go to vocational schools, while most others only want a college degree, Lan said.
But Dr. Hoang Ngoc Vinh, director of the Professional Education Department at the education ministry, said the unemployment problem might come from the quality of university education, rather than the surplus of university graduates.
“The quality of university graduates may have not met the demands of the labor market,” he said, as cited by Tuoi Tre.
The ministry said the national unemployment rate is now 2.35%.
A survey conducted by the ministry in Hanoi found unemployment is particularly high in the administrative, accounting and auditing job segments.