The number of graduates in basic jobs has doubled in five years

via HECSU Blog by Charlie Ball

No, it hasn’t. The number of graduates working in “menial jobs” has not doubled in the last five years.

This is going to be quite long, and a bit technical, but will also contain a rather important and interesting statistical point.

The DLHE release was (belatedly) accompanied by a piece or two making the claim above, which stems from two major statistical mistakes and one selective piece of historical editing.

The simplest part of this is that five years ago we weren’t in a recession and now we are. We’re not going to be in recession forever (we might be for a while, but that’s a different story), so just because some graduates are struggling now, doesn’t mean they’ll struggle for the rest of their careers, which will last for at least 45 more years. Also, it so happens that 2006/7 saw some of the best graduate employment figures for years, but that’s the comparison date, so it’s what we work with.

Now, the detailed stats stuff.

And for that you will have to go to Charlie’s blog post. It is a bit complicated but perfectly understandable.

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