Unemployment of the highly educated is a quite new phenomenon in the Finnish society. Higher education degree has previously been a safe against unemployment, low social status, lack of political power and low position in the labour market. In the beginning of the 1990´s Europe experienced a depression. That was also the starting point for the permanently high unemployment rates. Academic unemployment began to rise and it was also widely discussed in the Finnish media. For the first time highly educated started to realise that their place in the job market was not guaranteed. Since then, academic unemployment has been the fact, which must have been taken into consideration in education policy.The personal value of education has dropped since the 1990´s. To acquire academic education can nowadays be considered as a real personal risk. The value of a person's education lies highly in his or her other characteristics, for example age, sex, personal character, family ties, language skills and social contacts. If you choose to invest on higher education you can never be sure whether your investment will pay back or not.For an individual unemployment is usually an unwanted status. When a highly educated person cannot have a job and therefore enjoy the benefits of his/her educational status, it can be even personal crises. In this paper Finnish academic unemployed are studied. The main questions are:1. What happens when a highly educated person fails to find a job? What kinds of feelings, problems and thoughts it brings up? 2. How they cope with the situation?3. How they see their education in the context of unemployment. Was it worth it?4. How they see their future in the job market and in the society?The data consists of 87 biographies of academic unemployed. 48 biographies have been written in 1993 (during the depression period) and 39 in 2003. Thematisation is used to analyse these biographies.Based on the analysis of the data, the feelings of shame, uselessness and frustration, but on the other hand also determination and faith in finding a job characterize those who have been left unemployed. The writers see their education worth of effort even though they have not been able to find a job. They see their future unsure. In post-modern, meritocratic, Finnish society high education and good workplace are up to standard of a good citizen. To acquire education is considered everyone's duty. The writers are heavily criticizing the constant demand to acquire even more educational qualifications.