WASHINGTON

THIS may be little consolation to recent graduates who have sent out dozens of résumés with nary a response; who have been turned down for unpaid internships; who have vast amounts of student debt to repay as they continue in jobs as baby sitters and waiters.

But employers say they will hire 10.2 percent more college graduates from the class of 2012 than they did from the class of 2011, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

Nuggets of news like this are welcome as the economy fitfully recovers. Even so, joblessness among the young remains at crisis levels, economists say. In April, the unemployment rate for workers under age 25 was 16.4 percent, compared with 8.1 percent over all.

Those with only some college, or with high school degrees or less, are the worst off. But “every way you cut it — by race or gender, with or without a college degree — young people are just not getting the job opportunities they need, and it will have a lasting impact on their careers,” said Heidi Shierholz, an economist who studies the labor market at the Economic Policy Institute in Washington.