Proportion of graduates securing full-time jobs falls

THE proportion of graduates securing full-time jobs just over a year after leaving university has fallen, official figures show.

Of young people leaving university in 2018/19, just over half (56%) of UK-domiciled graduates were in full-time employment around 15 months after finishing their courses, compared with 59% of the 2017/18 cohort.

The majority of respondents to the Graduate Outcomes survey, conducted by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) for the second year in a row, graduated in 2019 and were surveyed after the pandemic was declared.

The most obvious effects of the pandemic on the cohort was an increase in unemployment and a 50% drop in the proportion of graduates who took time out to travel – from 1.4% to 0.7%, according to the HESA analysis.

Figures also show that black graduates are now even more likely to be unemployed more than a year after leaving university than their white peers. Data shows that, of those who left university in 2018/19, 7% of UK-domiciled black graduates were unemployed, compared with just 4% of white graduates.

There was a greater increase in the proportion of black graduates reporting to be unemployed than the proportion of unemployed white graduates between 2017/18 and 2018/19, according to the survey. In 2017/18, 5% of black graduates were unemployed 15 months after leaving university, compared with just 3% of white graduates.

The statistics also show that UK-domiciled male graduates (6%) are more likely to be unemployed than female graduates (5%) – and yet males are more likely to be paid more than their female peers. Of the graduates working full-time in the UK just 15 months after leaving university, less than half (48%) of males were earning salaries below £27,000, compared with more than three in five (61%) females, the figures suggest.

Overall, the survey – which looked at data of 380,970 graduates – found 88% of graduates were in some form of work or further study, down from 90% in the survey of 2017/18 graduates.