Introduction. The explosive growth of tertiary education around the world calls attention to how this affects the employment of young graduates.Aim. The current research paper is aimed to analyse how the growth of young people’s participation in tertiary education is reflected in the change of their employment and economic activity.Methodology and research methods. The comparative and correlation analysis was used to examine the relationship between changes in the education attainment of young people and the dynamics of employment and economic activity indicators by levels of education. The article deals with educational statistics data from OECD countries, Russia and some other countries participating in OECD educational research.Results. The results of the analysis presented in the article show that the growth of tertiary education leads to an increase in the unemployment rate among the young population; however, this is true only for the least advanced programmes, while there is an increase in the employment rate for master’s degree graduates. Economic activity among young graduates with a master’s degree grew faster after the 2009 crisis than among graduates of other tertiary education programmes. Master’s degree graduates were in a better position during the crisis of 2020 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.Scientific novelty. The authors presented a detailed analysis of the growth in the scale of tertiary education and the changes of status in the labour market indicators of graduates of different tertiary education programmes.Practical significance of the study lies in the development of the information and analytical basis for adjusting further policy in the field of development of tertiary education based on the goal of increasing youth employment.