Graduates are facing the toughest job market in years, with jobs disappearing as higher taxes and technology put employers under pressure. The Telegraph has the story:
Just 8,383 roles for university leavers were advertised in July, a 45% drop on a year ago and the lowest since the figures were first compiled in 2016.
The graduate jobs drought contrasts with the record flood of 262,820 18 year-olds preparing to begin their degree studies after earning a university place in their A-level results this month.
It represents a steep challenge to Andy Burnham as rising unemployment and benefits bills limit his options. Meanwhile anger over crippling student debts and the decline in the relative value of a degree is gripping graduates whose Labour votes he will need.
Employers are slashing entry-level hiring after Labour increased National Insurance contributions and the minimum wage, making inexperienced staff less attractive.
At the same time, large employers such as the Big Four accountants are seeking to use AI software to do paperwork that would have traditionally occupied their graduates.
The average graduate salary was advertised at £25,813 last month, roughly equivalent to a full-time job on the minimum wage of £12.71 per hour.
Job prospects for university leavers have sharply deteriorated in the past decade, according to findings by Adzuna, a recruitment website. From a peak of more than 55,000 graduate posts in 2017, vacancies are down 85%.
The crisis will test the new Chancellor John Healey at his maiden Budget in October. Mr Burnham has insisted he will stick to Labour’s manifesto, which pledges no rises in personal tax rates and made employers a target for Rachel Reeves as she sought to fund more public spending.
Her raids have sent youth unemployment soaring. More than 16% of 16 to 24-year-olds are seeking work. More than a million are “Neets”, classed as those not in employment, education or training and harming their long-term prospects. A review by Alan Milburn, a former Health Secretary under Sir Tony Blair, found that one in seven Neets had a university degree.
Worth reading in full.
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You would have to be mad to go to university now. Better all round to learn a trade and you don’t end up with a massive debt for no benefit
I’m a professional freelance translator. I used to act as a mentor to students from my old university seeking a career in the same field as me. However, I gave up that role three years ago. Machine translation was undermining the profession, and I could see that AI was going to decimate it, as now appears to be happening. There is still a role for humans in the process, but mainly just as proofreaders, as companies turn to AI, which they see as a cheaper option. The need for highly qualified graduate linguists is becoming questionable.
I’m glad I’m at the end of my career, when retirement is feasible, but I just couldn’t bring myself to enthuse about the job and encourage youngsters to embark on what looks increasingly like a career dead end.
Unless something dramatic happens, I expect AI to swallow up many other non-physical jobs like mine.
I saw this headline yesterday but didn’t read the article. Imagine my surprise when I saw another online last night that said university applications had risen by 3%.
Is nobody talking to young people about their choices for the future? ‘Borrow some money, study for 3 or 4 years and start life saddled with debt, while your chances of landing a job disappear over the horizon’ does not sound like a good deal.
A challenge to Andy Burnham? If that is who you expect to correct this situation, you may have a very long time waiting. As technology has grown, as business taxes have grown, as the Uk has become less attractive to foreign companies, the job market has dwindled. Even the nhs is hiring fewer doctors.
I predict a large number of these Graduates clutching a pretty worthless degree will conclude that what they REALLY need is a Masters ….. more student life and more student debt.
And at the end of it, they will still be unable to get a job.
It turns out that the university of life (ie an apprenticeship / trade / skill) is going to be more marketable than the “Mickey Mouse degree, low level ‘ology, and Arts Degrees which used to automatically lead into a low-level public sector job.
£50K of debt and no job.
Blame Blair, Brown, Cameron, May, Johnson, Sunak and Two-Tier.
Even when I graduated from University and started an 11-year spell as a teacher, I could see that plumbers were taking home a lot more money than I was. Not only that, but schools were encouraging so many students to follow the academic path who really would have been much better off getting a job straight out of school, or taking on some kind of apprenticeship.
Record unemployment of unskilled British youngsters (no a degree, unless directly related to an occupation is not a skill)… yet more, mostly, young men are imported every year. You couldn’t make it up.
Not all graduates are equally employable, however. I think that is a glaringly obvious point!
Civil Engineering vs Decolonisation Studies, for example?
And they blame capitalism on account of being indoctrinated, don’t forget.
And more than the subjects. British graduates are increasingly entitled, activist and prejudiced against anyone who doesn’t think like them. Without naming names, businesses I’ve known prefer to employ older British or foreign students who don’t come with that level of hassle and uselessness, even if more expensive.
The Uni Experience just seems to be three years spent getting drunk, shagging, eating ready meals and curries while piling up debt.
Don’t forget getting totally indoctrinated!
A little unfair, I currently have a 31yo daughter about to begin her final year and she absolutely has not been doing any of that (well, she bulk cooks a mean curry) but that’s it, with the exception of piling up the debt (helped over the jobless summer by us, her parents).
She had 8 years of employment experience before she decided on a career and decided to get a degree, I don’t know whether the world of wildlife conservation will have any jobs going in 2027 but I hope so.
I think your daughter’s path makes sense. I was in the same position, having worked for quite a few years before I decided what course of education would best suit my aims. If only I’d been able to bulk-cook a mean curry.
A disaster foreseeable and foretold… these people are so thick and so callously indifferent to the real world consequences of their actions, they are quite obviously unfit to hold public office.
Oh how the political class have got it wrong. What a total failure of public policy.
For fourth form politicians who had a job paid for by tax payers or union members since they came out of nappies it all seemed like a jolly jape. An experiment.
Unfortunately such experiments, launched by Ken Clarke in the Cabinet Room have real life consequences. We have suffered badly.
our young people have been lured into large debt to get devalued degrees. They have been trained in the leftist approach and consider themselves deserving. Far too well credentialed to work. Far too under experienced or socially aware to actually be employable.
Few repay their loans, most especially overseas (EU) students and left wing ones who never wanted to work.
Nu Labour took up the Clarke policy, expanded it without challenge from HM Opposition and the Tories followed through.
disaster.