Graduate unemployment

Normally we'd have to wait until next June to find out what the unemployment rate was for graduates who left university in 2008/9 six months after graduating - DLHE is in progress and won't complete for a little while.

But thanks to a Parliamentary question from David Willetts to the Cabinet Office Minister, Angela Smith, we have at least got an estimate for graduate unemployment (for graduates who had received their degree within the last year) in June 2009.

The figure is 11.4% of graduates who are economically active (all those who are working or seeking work - so I assume not those in further study), or 9.4% of all graduates who got degrees within the last year.

It is also not clear what is meant by 'degree' - if it is the LFS, it could well be 'all Level 4 qualifications and above', which would bring in all sorts of qualifications from Foundation degrees to PhDs - Masters qualifications would probably be the major contributer to that figure apart from Bachelors degrees.

The source used is the Labour Force Survey, and so the stats are considered acceptable but with significant potential variation.

Looking at previous years data it does vary a little from DLHE, but what this tells us is that 2008/9 did see significantly worse graduate unemployment than 2008.

Essentially, the unemployment rate according to the LFS went up between 3.3 and 4.3% between 2008 and 2009, which means we can expect a rate for DLHE well above 10% and possibly over 11% - a figure to rival the recessions of the 90s, but not quite as bad as that of the early 80s.

Why work experience matters: a HECSU report

HECSU has just published a report exploring Real Prospects 2009 graduates’ experiences of placements, internships and work experience. The Real Prospects 2009 graduates that describe a transition from work experience and placements to employment highlight the importance of making students aware of and ensuring access to these opportunities. What the Real Prospects graduates’ experiences do emphasise is how useful work experience is for graduates and that not only does it allow them to acquire skills, knowledge and contacts it also enables them to explore job roles, careers and their interests.

One graduate comments:

“After completing a voluntary internship with the employer, I was made aware of their vacancies at the time, one of which, higher members of the organisation strongly suggested I apply for. I felt very comfortable with the working environment having grown quite accustomed to it during my internship and was made to feel very welcome throughout”


Go to the HECSU website for the full report

Blocked!

Having a torrid time trying to write an article for Graduate Market Trends on Masters graduates at the moment.

I hate getting blocked, especially when it comes to statty data of the kind that I rather like.

We've been conducting an ongoing exercise of trying to gauge the state of the current graduate labour market in the regions, and it has sparked off (at least in my head) some of the thoughts I have been having about labour market information. We use the HESA DLHE data quite a lot, and this summer and autumn I've been developing a little sideline in talking about why this data is so very good and useful. If anyone was lucky/unlucky (delete according to personal experience) to catch any of what I can only call my turns at Biennial or recent events, you'll have caught my arguments.

But one thing we can't really do with it, is capture a current flavour of fast-moving labour markets of the kind we're experiencing at the moment. To do that, we need boots on the ground and a great deal of observation. Statistics Office data is rarely differentiated at graduate level, and with the proportion of the UK working age population possessing Level 4 or above somewhere around 33%, it means this data is not always helpful to assess the graduate labour market - let alone that for postgraduates. There are often useful bits and pieces of data here and there - for example Elizabeth Wilkinson is currently doing some very nice posts on NW employers that deserve an airing, but in general, it's a bit of an uphill task to try to keep on top of what's going on in local labour markets.

That doesn't mean we shan't and won't try, but there are limits to what can be achieved, and so we're always keen to hear from anyone with current intelligence on the state of their local labour markets.

That way we won't have to strain poor old DLHE to breaking point and then get upset when it doesn't do what we've asked it to.

To prove I'm still alive

...I'm doing a Guardian webchat this afternoon at 2 on NHS careers.

Anyone wanting to ask questions, hurl insults, critique my spelling and grammar or even find out about NHS careers, can look here

Graduate Market Trends autumn edition

The Autumn edition of GMT features the usual round up of graduate labour market surveys and a HECSU survey of higher education careers services exploring how they are experiencing the recession. This edition also includes articles by Arti Kumar outlining the SOAR (Self, Opportunity, Aspirations and Results) model and how employability can be part of this approach, Trevor Hart and Paul Barratt presenting research into graduate employment in SMEs and Professor Jenny Bimrose writing about a study set out to evaluate the effectiveness of face-to-face guidance interviews.

Go to the HECSU website to download the new version of GMT

Subscribe to GMT

Postgraduates and the labour market

There's been quite a lot happening here in the last few weeks so we have been a bit short on opportunities to update the blog.

We're currently engaged in a range of investigations, from examination of the current state of the graduate labour market in the regions, to investigation of the role of networking in job-seeking, to some more straightforward number-crunching on postgraduates.

I've recently done a couple of presentations on the state of the labour market for postgraduates at the start of the year and there are a number of themes that have emerged.

The number of Masters graduates actually barely rose last year, and we expect that have to increased more sharply when the 2008/9 figures emerge in a few months, and for there to be an increase in Masters participation for a few years. Unemployment rates, and rates of employment in non-graduate employment, both increased this year, as expected, but perhaps not as much as I anticipated. PhD unemployment didn't go up, but the lessons of previous recessions tell us that for doctoral graduates, there seems to be an additional labour market lag.

All of this comes against the backdrop of the announcement of a new review of postgraduate education in the UK.

The remit for the Review seems to tend towards the economic benefits for the UK of PG study, but I hope there is sufficient attention paid to the benefits (both economic and otherwise) of study for participants, and on whether current support for students (particularly Masters students) is sufficient. Masters students ought really to be a key focus - PhD students, although important, are a relatively small minority of postgraduates and many are now well provided for in terms of support thanks to Vitae - although some attention should be paid to those who are not Research Council funded.

The Roberts Review produced tangible improvements in provision for PhD students and now postdoctoral graduates. Let's hope this Review proves as beneficial to Masters students.

Wordle Of The Week: HECSU Blog

Yes, time for navel-gazing with this week's Wordle.

I can recommend this if you want to know what words you overuse (..."interesting"...)



As usual, click on the picture to enlarge it.

This image was generated using wordle.net from the Feedburner feed from the HECSU blog.

New Beginnings

For many of our careers services colleagues, a new academic year has just started and with it a new cohort of students. Certainly Manchester is now bustling with new faces and there seems to be an awful lot going on.

With the economy as it is - although there seems to be a belief that recession is coming to an end, the labour market is likely to be depressed for some time - there is a great deal of information that the sector could use.

I'm currently working on information looking at Masters graduate outcomes from last year and hope to be able to report on that shortly, but if anyone has anything they think we should be looking at, we're always happy to hear from the sector.

As a start, though, in 2007/8, 45,960 Masters qualifications were awarded by UK institutions to UK domiciled graduates. It's a very modest growth from 2006/7 of just 0.7%, and includes 3,085 MBAs. We'll have more information later on.