Drop in graduate employment ‘a cooling, not a collapse’

Average salaries for degree-holders have increased slightly but the employment rate has dipped, according to the latest graduate outcomes survey.

Of those who left university in the 2023-24 academic year, 81 per cent were either in paid positions or doing unpaid work, compared with 82 per cent of the 2022-23 cohort and 83 per cent of their 2021-22 peers.

The Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa) graduate outcomes data released on 4 June show an increase in the overall median salary of UK graduates in full-time paid employment 15 months after graduation, hitting £30,000, up from £28,500.

Medicine and dentistry graduates recorded the highest median salary (£43,749) while graduates from media, journalism and communications subjects recorded the lowest (£25,938).

Unemployment rose one percentage point, accounting for 7 per cent of responses from the 2023-24 graduates compared with 6 per cent of those a year prior.

In 2017-18, when the survey first took place, 5 per cent of graduates reported themselves to be unemployed.

However, Charlie Ball, head of labour market intelligence at Jisc, Hesa’s parent organisation, said that while the headline figures “show a small decline in outcomes”, they mainly reflect a “subdued wider economy”.

Jisc has also shared the results from its early careers survey, which shows 20 per cent of the 5,000 recent graduates polled had applied for more than 100 jobs in their bid to find work.

The poll also found that 44 per cent of graduates felt AI was threatening their career prospects and reducing the number of jobs available.

Hesa’s graduate outcomes data, one of the largest annual social surveys in the UK, was this year completed by 353,755 people out of a possible 1 million eligible to take part.

Of the latest graduate cohort analysed, 75 per cent of UK graduates who were working in the UK were in “high-skilled” jobs, with that figure higher for graduates from science subjects (81 per cent) than for those from non-science subjects.

In comparison, 76 per cent were working in high-skilled roles 15 months after graduating as part of the 2022-23 cohort.

A key finding is that unlike fluctuations in employment, the proportion of graduates going on to enter full-time further study has remained constant since the previous data release, at 5 per cent.

That follows year-on-year declines in pursuing postgraduate full-time study since 2019-20, when it stood at 8 per cent.

Meanwhile, the proportion of graduates saying they “strongly disagree” with the idea they use what they learnt in their degrees in later life has risen by 2 percentage points over five years of data.

Where just 7 per cent of degree holders who left university in 2019-20 robustly rejected the assertion they were “utilising” what they learnt during their studies in their “current activity”, 9 per cent of graduates from the 2023-24 academic year said the same.

The proportion of those who reported a milder “disagree” also rose, from 12 per cent in 2019-20 to 13 per cent in the latest data drop.

“The general level of satisfaction with ‘I’m using my qualification, I’m on [my] career track’ has slightly dropped,” Charlie Ball told Times Higher Education.

But that shift was mainly “people saying, ‘I’m not sure’” how much my degree is applicable, “not people saying ‘I’m less satisfied’”, Ball said.

Overall, Ball said that despite a modest increase in unemployment and decrease in the number of those finding full-time employment in the 15 months after graduating, “the value of a degree seems to be holding up remarkably well”.

“The data is pretty clear, full-time employment is down a little,” said Ball, in an online event discussing the Hesa results, although he clarified the change was “not substantial”.

“Unemployment is up a bit,” he said, adding that the state of affairs is “certainly not a graduate labour market that is collapsing”.

“It’s a little bit down on last year…[but] it’s about where you’d expect considering the general state of the economy,” Ball said.

Regarding varying outcomes between degree paths, Ball said “most” subjects had seen a modest rise in unemployment, but that there wasn’t a very “consistent” direction across disciplines, suggesting a “general malaise” in the jobs market more than anything else.

“The popular rhetoric is that in this economy, the arts and humanities aren’t particularly valuable – we see very little evidence of that in this data,” Ball added.

He admitted they were “not great figures” but said he did not believe they reflected a “long-term shift in graduate demand”, rather a poor economic context. The situation, he said, was a “cooling not a collapse” and urged people to consider the figures carefully.

“I think this cohort has done remarkably well considering the headwinds they’re facing,” Ball added.

Commenting on the data, Joe Marshall chief executive of the National Centre for Universities and Business, said “it is encouraging to see that graduate outcomes remain resilient”.

He added: “If the UK wants stronger growth, higher productivity and greater competitiveness, helping graduates succeed remains a critical part of the answer. That means continuing to invest in the partnerships that connect education to opportunity and ensuring that talented people can apply their skills in every part of the economy.”

georgia.luckhurst@timeshighereducation.com