Government control of all college graduate jobs

Hi all. I was stationed in germany for 3 years. I was living off base in a house on the economy. My (then) landlord told me his son would soon graduate college and he would have to take a job that the german gov. gave him. My landlord, made it sound like the germ. gov. controled all the jobs. This didn't sound right to me, but I never talked to any other germans to confirm this. Just thought I would check into this and see what others have to say about it. Now keep inmind I didn't speek any german and the landlord, didn't speek very good english, so I may have missunderstood him. Thanks for reading.

This is obviously a misunderstanding, due to the lack of language skills. Someone might have to take one out of a couple of jobs, offered by the "Arbeitsagentur", if he is recieving unemployment benefits. If he wouldnt take it, he would get less benefits in the future. The government doesnt controll job allocation.

Well, if he was studying to become a teacher - 90% of all jobs are under "government control". Same of course for highly specialized things such as municipal administration or municipal development.

Could have also been talking of the required civil service or Military commitment.

And in the USA, a lot of jobs too are "under government control". Jobs in the public sector at federal, state, metro, county and city level.

Not for a college graduate

College/university is not regarded a educational reason for postponing service by the Bundeswehr. Okay, there are a handful combinations where being drafted after university would be possible, but chances are... slim. Extremely slim. Qualified medical/pharmaceutical personnel without prior service and with no call-up before uni only, pretty much.

WOW! So many responces. I want to thank everyone who took time to respond. I have also heard, that college is free in the Euro contries. Is this true? Could I send my kids over there to get their college taken car of ) Joke...maybe not.

Many countries use the Euro as currency. Having the Euro as currency has no influence over if colleges are "free" in a particular country or not.
Answering for Germany: currently most universities don't levy fees but some do and there is an increasing trend to do so. There are also private institutions and they sure do charge.
You are presumably aware that there are other costs to studying apart from colleague fees? And with the falling Dollar against the Euro this isnt going to be cheap for you...

Sounds like he was a Beamte - a civil servant. There are special training programs run by different government agencies (e.g. tax authority), and kids who do well enough are generally pretty much guaranteed secure jobs with the government. (This has changed in many cases, with finishers getting only limited contracts.) Many university grads aspire to civil servant jobs as well. An acquaintance just finished his law studies and was thrilled to be hired by a government agency.

The government =does= to a great degree then control the careers of its servants. Know of one case in the former East where a married couple worked for the same agency, both were lawyers. When she got pregnant, the director said the man would have to take paternity leave, b/c the agency couldn't spare the woman. (Was bemused that the husband felt that advertising his boss' opinion that he was dispensable "justified" him staying at home with the kid. Would think he'd have looked tonnes better to friends etc. if he had claimed it was a choice b/c he wanted to spend time with the kid.)