An overhaul of unemployment services to cope with the rapidly rising numbers of out-of-work professionals has been ordered by ministers as the jobless total hits two million. White-collar workers visiting Jobcentres will be redirected to specialist recruitment agencies or offered new three-month college courses to refresh their skills, The Times has learnt. Ministers believe that services designed mainly to help the long-term jobless must be changed to placate middle-class anger in areas unused to high unemployment. The political threat is further underlined by predictions that graduate vacancies will fall by more than 5 per cent this year. Investment banks are expected to reduce recruitment from universities by 28 per cent. The Association of Graduate Recruiters is also forecasting that those who do find a job will be paid less. Related Links Four-day week spreads to the City Any job is better than travel, graduates told RBS to cut 2,300 jobs after ex-boss says sorry About 3,000 job losses were announced yesterday - including 2,300 at the Royal Bank of Scotland - on the eve of the official unemployment figures. The number of jobless climbed to 1.92million in the three months to the end of November and is expected to rise more steeply in the first half of this year. Gordon Brown will publicise efforts to expand the number of posts offered at Jobcentres at a meeting with business leaders today. Executives from Sainsbury`s, Royal Mail, Whitbread, Centrica, National Express and Travelodge will be among those at the first meeting of the National Employment Partnership in Downing Street. The companies, as well as NHS and local authority leaders, will agree to advertise all non-specialist vacancies through Jobcentres and to increase the availability of apprenticeships. David Cameron also called for a fundamental reform of employment help to reflect the fact that the economy was shrinking. Rules denying professionals funding to learn a trade should be scrapped, the Tory leader said. An incoming Conservative administration would introduce self-help jobs clubs to support people through the recession. "There isn`t just a hard core of people not in work, education or training - we`re in an era of mass unemployment," Mr Cameron said. Ministers have become concerned about the rising tide of professional unemployment. "Frankly Jobcentre Plus just isn`t geared up to cope with the sort of people that will be coming through their doors in increasing numbers," one said privately. The Department for Work and Pensions has already signed an agreement with recruitment agencies to offer specialist help for unemployed professionals to find work. In addition the Department for Innovation, University and Skills is secretly negotiating with colleges to provide new 12-week courses specifically aimed at helping recently out-of-work professionals to refresh their qualifications. The number of people claiming unemployment benefit has increased by more than 300,000 since July. A quarter of the new claimants are white-collar workers - managers, senior public sector officials, technicians and administrative staff.