Graduate unemployment falls
25/09/2014
The number of unemployed graduates has fallen over the last 12 months, a study has suggested.
The Higher Education Careers Service Unit (Hecsu) studied 256,350 recent graduates for six months after they left university, and found that just 7.3% were unemployed in January 2014.
In January 2013, graduate unemployment was measured at 8.5% in the same study, meaning that it appears to have fallen by around 1.2% over the last year.
The research also suggested that fewer graduates have opted to study for a post-graduate degree, as the number of students going on to further study fell from 13% to 12.4% in the year to January 2014.
The other positive news was that fewer graduates were working in ‘non-professional’ roles. The number of people working in retail, catering, waiting and bar staff roles dropped from 13.7% to 13% in the 12 months to January 2014.
Charlie Ball, deputy director at Hecsu said that the drop in graduate unemployment was a “fascinating example” of how the market can change so quickly. However, he did warn that students should “bear this in mind when deciding which subject to study”.
Picking up
Some of the graduate employment sectors that were hit the hardest by the recession, such as the science and technology sector have also showed encouraging signs of a recovery.
The report said that whilst the number of new graduates employed as science professionals in January 2014 was still quite low, there was a year-on-year increase of around 22.4%.
Mr Ball also spoke of the growing graduate employment opportunities outside of London and the South East of England by stating: "There are significant increases in employment across all sectors and the turn in fortune is spreading beyond the South East with graduates in cities such as Birmingham and Manchester doing particularly well."
However, the report did state that graduates are more likely to “bounce around or can’t find what they are after immediately”.
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