What do graduates do? shows graduate unemployment rate lowest since 1989

an article posted on the AGCAS blog

The latest edition of What do graduates do? has shown that a robust graduate jobs market combined with a sharp rise in students taking postgraduate courses has led to the lowest graduate unemployment rate since 1989.

What do graduates do? is the result of a close collaboration between AGCAS and Prospects, on behalf of the Higher Education Careers Service Unit (HECSU) to analyse the destinations of last year’s graduates, six months after leaving university.

Findings

It reported a fall in the graduate unemployment rate to 5.3% from 5.7% in 2016. Only three years in the last 40 has the UK experienced lower levels. The employment rate for graduates also fell, from 76% to 74%.

The reason both employment and unemployment rates fell is due to a sharp rise in graduates entering further study. Increasing from 13% to 16% this year – 39,135 graduates entered further study, up from 32,385 last year.

While the UK is currently not in recession, increasing numbers of graduates going into further study are historically linked to economic downturn, as demonstrated in the last three major downturns.

The report also found that while there were large rises in graduates entering nursing, marketing, finance and IT, there were significant falls in the number of graduates working in medicine, teaching and engineering, reflecting the decreasing number of students studying those subjects. Despite many industries such as these having a shortage of workers, this did not translate into higher graduate starting salaries, which remained flat at an average of around £21,000.

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