Graduate job prospects have fallen to their worst level in three decades, with one in ten university leavers planning to seek work abroad this summer.
New research from graduate recruitment firm High Fliers surveyed 15,000 students across more than 30 universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and the London School of Economics.
The proportion of graduates looking for employment overseas has risen by a third, climbing from 7.8 per cent in 2024 to over ten per cent this year.
High Fliers founder Martin Birchall described the current landscape in stark terms, warning that conditions have deteriorated dramatically for this year’s cohort of graduates.
“This is probably the worst time in the last 30 years to be leaving university,” Birchall said.
The number of graduates securing jobs has reached the second lowest level since High Fliers began tracking the figures in 1995, painting a deeply troubling picture for school leavers.
“The prospects of landing a job this summer are the lowest they’ve been in all the years we’ve been doing this tracking,” Birchall said.
The findings arrive against a backdrop of a widening youth unemployment crisis, with the cost to the UK economy now estimated at £125bn a year.
Nearly a million young people are currently classified as not in education, employment, or training, a group commonly referred to as Neets, according to the research.
Lancaster University’s Work Foundation has reported that the number of Neets has not been this high for 13 years, underlining the scale of the structural problem facing young people in the UK.
Despite the bleak outlook, this year’s graduates appear to be fighting back, submitting applications in record numbers and engaging with a higher volume of employers than previous cohorts.
“It’s the second lowest it’s ever been and yet this cohort appears to have done more applications and more engagement with employers. They’ve taken part in a record number of career activities, and more than ever before they started early. Over a half of respondents had started job hunting in their first year,” Birchall said.
By February, the students surveyed had collectively submitted nearly 1.7 million applications, more than double the number completed by the 2023 cohort at the same stage.
Only 27 per cent of those surveyed had secured a job in the UK or abroad by February, a record low for the survey outside of the pandemic period.
The only time that figure fell lower was in February 2021, during the height of the pandemic, when it dropped to 23 per cent, compared to a typical range of between 35 and 40 per cent.
Economic instability appears to be a driving factor behind graduates looking overseas, with many citing a lack of confidence in the UK business environment as a key concern.
“You look at how graduate jobs have gone up and down since the nineties, and every time there’s a dip on the chart you can put a name on it. What we’ve seen now is three years of decline, but we can’t put a name on it,” Birchall said.
“We’re not in a recession, this isn’t a singular national crisis but confidence in business is low and it seems nobody wants to employ young people,” he added.