In these straitened times of cuts across the board it should be good to report an uplifting surplus, but one that is not welcome is the surplus of unemployed graduates. According to the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) ,[1] which published the summer edition of its bi-annual survey on 6th July 2010, the number of graduate vacancies has fallen by 7%. This decrease follows a reduction of 8.9% in 2008.
The drop in graduate vacancies has produced a corresponding increase in the number of applications for each job and now stands at 70 university leavers chasing each graduate job, compared to 49 last year and 31 in 2008.
This latest figure is due not only to a decrease in jobs but also to the number of graduate job seekers being swollen by 2007 and 2008 graduates who have yet to find work and an understandable move on the part of graduates to send off more applications during a downturn.
From an employer’s point of view, they can be choosier than ever and the AGR survey indicates that 78% of them are retreating to the safety net by demanding a minimum 2.1 selection criteria to cope with the influx. In 2008, this figure was 67%. Additionally, the median graduate starting salary has failed to rise and remains static at the 2008 figure of £25,000.
Degree of despondency
The latest estimate from the Higher Education Careers Service Unit had warned, that at worst, a quarter of all graduates could soon be on the dole. Nearly a million 16 to 25-year-olds (one in six) are already out of work.
In a letter to The Guardian (Friday 9th July 2010), Martina Milburn, chief executive of the Prince’s Trust, writes that with youth unemployment costing the economy £10 million a day in lost productivity, the need to get young people into work is even greater than ever. ‘The government, charities and employers must work together to give these disadvantaged young people the long-term support they need to escape unemployment for good.’
In another letter from Jane Scott Paul, chief executive, Association of Accounting Technicians, she says as we are now seeing the ‘university or bust’ route, which has led to on-the-job vocational training being viewed as a poor relation, offers no guarantee of a job upon graduation. ‘Greater emphasis should be placed on high-quality vocational qualifications and apprenticeships, the flexibility of which gives businesses what they want and need most – a well-trained, highly skilled workforce that is up to the job.’
Looking beyond classification
Carl Gilleard, chief executive AGR, commented: ‘Two consecutive years of decreases in vacancy levels is a familiar pattern during an economic downturn and this latest fall mirrors the two-year drop in graduate vacancies prompted by the dot.com crash in 2001/02. Employers’ earlier predictions for this year’s recruitment season have turned out to be somewhat premature in their optimism and today’s findings suggest that the recovery is going to be slower than previously thought.
‘Recruiters are under intense pressure this year dealing with a huge number of applications from graduates for a diminishing pool of jobs. Those of our members who took part in the survey reported a total of 686,660 applications since the beginning of the 2010 recruitment campaign. However, while this approach does aid the sifting process it can rule out promising candidates with the right work skills unnecessarily. We are encouraging our members to look beyond the degree classification when narrowing down the field of candidates to manageable proportions.’
[1] www.agr.org.uk