HECSU Blog

High Fliers says work experience useful

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 13 Jun 2013 18:57:00 +0000

New High Fliers report out today, and amongst other things it stresses the important of work experience. Now, there is a slight element of discussion of the theological leanings of the Pope when we read this sort of thing - of course work experience is important. But other findings are just as interesting.

This group are more optimistic than in previous years about their job prospects (and although it's hard to gauge, at the moment the suggestion is that they have reason to feel the graduate jobs market has picked up). And more have actually applied - 63% of those surveyed (this is High Fliers, so it's a sample of graduates from specific institutions with high entry requirements, so they're not typical of all graduates) have already put at least one application in, so that's good. They're also putting more applications in each - I'm a little more equivocal about this because a large volume of applications doesn't always mean each one is of good quality.

As usual, graduates are probably a bit optimistic about their salaries - they expect to start on £22,800 (so well above the actual average), expect to be topping £40k in their mid 20s and a sixth expect £100k by 30. London is, naturally, a favoured first job location.

Somehow, we have got to get better at explaining to young people what their real career prospects actually are, because these figures tell me that a lot of the respondents to this survey may end up disappointed with their careers, and with HE and careers services, when they fail to get this kind of pay. I'm fascinated by this kind of data and would love to know where this cohort are getting their information from.

This group isn't typical of students in general - they're much more likely to aspire to postgraduate study, and to want to work in London - but it is an interesting insight into what graduate expect to get out of their early careers. We need to look at this kind of information and work out how to repond to the challenges they represent to information, advice and guidance provision.

170 years of industrial change

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 11:49:00 +0000

The ONS have released analysis from the Census examining 170 years of industrial change across England and Wales.

It's one of the most interesting things I've read in ages. There is no need to summarise it here - it's done elegantly enough over there.

If you're looking for a stark reminder of how much industry changes, and for a clear rationale for increased HE participation, or just to look at how interesting data can be, get over there right now. We'll wait.

New figures on the graduate jobs market

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 20 May 2013 14:23:00 +0000

Incomes Data Services have just released their new survey of graduate starting salaries. I have to admit we don't buy the full report, but here's a link to the press release.

They see a modest increase in the number of graduate vacancies this year - up about 8% on last year - although this isn't evenly spread across industries - they see falls in finance and law and a large rise in jobs in retail (I assume this means retail management). Interestingly, they also forsee a small rise in public sector employment, although I think this might be a factor of their sample. They say starting salaries remain flat - and will remain so until next year, and quote a median figure of £25,500.

This tells us that this is another survey of London-based big graduate recruiters, with a focus on the finance industry.

As always, this is an interesting survey if you want data on this subset of the graduate jobs market, but of less use if your focus is elsewhere. But it does suggest that the jobs market at least doesn't seem to be getting much worse and may be improving in some areas.

I Want To Be.....An Astronaut

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 20 May 2013 10:28:00 +0000

Many congratulations to Tim Peake, who is set to be Britain's first astronaut in space for 20 years.

We've had 4 previous astronauts, three of whom had dual citizenship with the US. Helen Sharman has a degree and a doctorate in chemistry, Michael Foale's degrees are in astrophysics, Piers Sellers has a degree in ecological science and a doctorate in meteorology, Nicholas Patrick has an engineering degree from Cambridge, and then did his postgraduate study at MIT, and Tim Peake has a degree in flight dynamics.

In other words, all are STEM graduates, making 'astronaut' probably the most exclusive graduate job of all, and a pretty exciting aspiration for any talented young scientist.

'Graduate jobs are all with big business'

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 02 May 2013 09:35:00 +0000

Myths about the graduate jobs market: 5

This myth manifests itself in a range of ways - it's essentially similar to the ones where graduate training schemes are believed to be the sum total of the jobs market for graduates and any other options are not really graduate jobs.

Anyway, it's wrong. Here's how.

The graph below looks at the size of employer that graduates from 2010/11 were working in after six months.

So, the majority in large businesses, to be fair - but over 40 per cent were with smaller businesses. And before anyone comes back and says 'yes, how many of these are really graduate level', well, this is just graduate level jobs. For the record, if you look at the whole jobs market, these percentages barely change. Graduates are distributed across employer size as well as industry.

So, the gist is - although a small majority of graduate jobs are with large organisations, there are a lot of jobs with smaller ones. Now, this presents some challenges, of course, most notably with finding those jobs with smaller businesses - but that is where university careers services tend to shine.

Graduate training schemes are an excellent way into the graduate jobs market. But if you don't get on one, there are other options - even in the current economy.

Mixed news on university participation

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 09:39:00 +0000

New figures on participation rates in HE are out, and there is some attention being given to the news that undergraduate participation is estimated to have increased. This is good news, although it is worth reading the notes on methodology in the Statistical First Release:

Less prominently publicised in the same statistical release is that the participation rate for postgraduates is estimated to have gone down, from 9.1% amongst UK-domiciled 17-30 year olds to 8.8% (and this, itself, is down from 9.7% in 2009/10). This isn't so good, although it may be that the expected bump in entry to PG as a result of the recession is now righting itself.

Edited:14:32. Not so fast, Rushing To A Meeting Man! When we say 'participation rate' here, we do not mean the proportion of people going to postgraduate study. This report estimates the likelihood of someone going on to postgraduate study.

So, your average 17-30 year old has become less likely to take a postgraduate degree.

Apparently, better to have a degree than no qualification

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 14:13:00 +0000

We are not, despite appearances, dead - merely a bit tied up with data.

While we sift through Futuretrack stats to bring you pearls of wisdom, the 2012 Skills and Employment Survey has started releasing results.

The survey is the sixth in a series of surveys of individuals in employment - 3,200 this time around - aged 20-60 (this year's also sampled up to 65), and the series began in 1986. It's run by the Centre for Learning and Life Chances in Knowledge Economies and Societies (LLAKES) based at the Institute of Education.

The headline finding - that there are now more jobs requiring graduates than people without qualifications - has excited some comment, although I'm a little surprised that this comes as, er, a surprise.

There are some interesting other findings. As advertised, 26 per cent of jobs in the economy now explicitly require a degree. Or, if you like, if you don't go to university, you rule yourself out of a quarter of the economy. The proportion of jobs requiring degrees has gone up, but the authors - sugges that the proportion of graduates in jobs for which they're 'overqualified' has fallen in the last six years - after a long period of increase. The report suggests that between 2006 and 2012 - and bear in mind, the bulk of that time was after the recession began - we gained 1.9 million graduate jobs in the UK. Blimey!

Also interesting is the suggestion that employers might be reducing training for employees. This ties in with reports of widespread budget reductions amongst employers but is a trend we don't really want to see continue.

The upshot seems to be that demand for graduates does not appear to have reduced with the recession. This is, of course, in line with skills projections from the likes of Working Futures, which predicted 2 million new jobs at 'graduate' level between 2010 and 2020 (well, it looks like we're not far off already) - 7 million jobs available for graduates if replacement demand is included. With this in mind, it's also clear that it's necessary for the national economy that a steady, and significant, supply of graduates is maintained. It's interesting to see that confitmed.

Graduates and nursery education

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 29 Jan 2013 10:20:00 +0000

The Government has made announcements about changes to nursery education this morning, but there is one thing that troubles me and will trouble any institution who already offer courses in Early Years Education and its equivalents.

Last year 1015 first degree graduates were working as nursery nurses after six months. A further 495 were working as childminders. There are clearly graduates entering the profession.

However, these jobs fall under SOC classification 6121, and are classed as below professional level, non-graduate jobs. This is already an issue - are these graduates really not in graduate jobs?

Institutions or departments fulfilling the desire of the Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Education and Childcare to train graduates for childcare and nursery professions will find themselves earning poor employment metrics on KIS and Unistats, and will thus incur the wroth of the Minister for Universities and Science for not sending enough graduates into professional level employment.

This tension will need to be resolved if these new plans are to be successful and to avoid institutions who do as one Government department wishes falling foul of another.

Edited at 11:10: If you want this put a little more simply, here's a rudimentary infographic.

Social benefits of higher education

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 14:29:00 +0000

The OECD have just released a brief report on the social benefits of HE across their member nations. Much of the information comes from 'Education at a Glance', but presented in a neat way.

The UK is included, of course, and data shows that graduates are significantly more likely to vote in the UK, and more likely to report satisfaction with life in general than non-graduates (no life expectancy figures for the UK, oddly enough). Graduates in Greece seem pretty hacked off, though, and who can blame them?

This kind of information is always very welcome as we all want rather more metrics to demonstrate the value of HE than rather narrow measures of individual lifetime earnings.

More of this sort of thing, please!

What does 'good' look like?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 13:01:00 +0000

Recent discussions about the way that information about the graduate jobs market is relayed has brought me to think about this long-burning question: what does 'good' look like?

What do people expect the graduate jobs market to look like? We have to bear in mind that at no time has the UK ever experienced full graduate employment, and anyone telling you that there was a period in the past when graduates all got jobs is misleading you. There was graduate unemployment in the 60s pre-Robbins, although the rate was lower. This is hardly surprising, since Robbins concluded - correctly - that we weren't producing enough graduates, and one symptom would be a very low unemployment rate.

At present, the unemployment rate after 6 months is below 10 per cent, which is better than it has been in previous recessions (depressing to use 'recession' to describe an economic situation which has been in place for 5 years, but that's the reality), but far below where it was in 2007. And opinions differ on the nature and extent of underemployment, but it's real, persistent and probably affects fewer than half of an employed graduate cohort after six months. It's not 'good' by an objective measure. But, under the circumstances? Is it as bad as we expected? Does it say anything about the quality of graduates?

So, what would a 'good' jobs market look like? Was 2006/7 a good jobs market? Probably, yes, but there were still high unemployment rates for some subjects - IT, most notably. Did we see that the market was good at the time? Possibly not. I don't recall the press being especially positive (and I have some pieces).

But what would be 'good' now? What are we hoping for? What do we expect? I'll be honest and say my hopes for the labour market have certainly become less ambitious - I'd be happy with 'not getting any worse' in 2013 and be very pleased with 'getting slightly better'.

But does it matter what the data says the jobs market looks like? No matter how we perceive it to be, there will still be individuals with their own experiences, who need information, advice and guidance to make decisions. No matter how difficult it might be at the moment, most graduates still get jobs and some business even expand and take people on. And even when the jobs market is at its supposed best, there would still be people who struggled.

There's no sign of a significant recovery - but there's also no sign of the graduate jobs market getting significantly worse. Let's hope that we can see some recovery - and be realistic about what we expect the graduate labour market to look like.

High Fliers

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 12:37:00 +0000

New High Fliers is out.

At this point I ought to do the usual disclaimer about the sample. The survey covers the Times Top 100 employers only, and is heavily weighted towards London (84% of the sample are hiring there) and the finance industry (over 40% of the jobs covered are in the industry).

To give a bit of perspective, last year, 20% of graduates started work in London and somewhere around 6 or 7% of graduates went to work in the finance industry (it's not easy to be precise with SIC codes).

The Press have covered the basics in their idiosyncratic fashion - the jobs market is getting worse! No! It's getting better!

Actually, if one strove for accuracy, Lord Leveson, an impartial piece on this report would probably read something like 'A survey of a part of the graduate jobs market found that last year was slightly more difficult than 2011, but that the employers surveyed currently expect 2013 to be a little better. All that may change, of course'. But that makes jolly dull headlines.

The report is free, so there's no excuse not to read it because there are a number of very interesting sections. The most significant part is the continuing story of how important work experience is for this group of employers. With the exception of investment banking and oil and gas, all sectors covered upped their numbers of work experience places, and in law and investment banking, the majority of graduates getting jobs last year with surveyed organisations had already worked there.

added at 15:05: even so, 44% of employers in the sample stated that they would be 'quite' or 'very' likely to offer a job to a graduate with no work experience at all

Most of the companies surveyed are offering structured work experience placements as part of a degree course, and it's plain that for some companies, the decision to work for them is best made when you apply for your course and not in your final year.

Overall, don't mistake this for a comprehensive look at the whole graduate jobs market, and so don't draw too many conclusions about the whole market from it (although it does envisage little change), but it works well as an examination of a small but sought-after slice of some of the best-paying employers and particularly the ways they recruit.

piece updated at 15:05 to correct a typo and to add another piece of data.

What do hospitality and tourism graduates do?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 09:47:00 +0000

Well, people keep asking, and as hospitality, leisure, transport and tourism (or, as we data nerds like to call is, JACS code N8) is the largest subject not to appear in What Do Graduates Do?, here is the data, courtesy of my diligent colleague and the editor of WDGD, Jen Redman.

Outcomes for 2010/11 UK-domiciled graduates in hospitality, leisure and tourism six months after graduation

Types of work for 2010/11 UK-domiciled graduates in hospitality, leisure and tourism who were working in the UK six months after graduation

Fans of What do graduates do?, which is, of course, everyone, will notice we're using different job categories than usual in the figure above. That's because this year will see the adoption of the new Standard Occupational Classification, SOC 2010, as part of the changes to DLHE that came in this time around, and so we will be making substantial revisions to the publication in general and the types of work in particular. Let us know what you think.

HEFCE publish HE in FE data

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 15:35:00 +0000

HEFCE have released their long-awaited (by me, at least) report into the outcome of graduates who took HE courses at English FE colleges.

These graduates are not included in standard DLHE data - franchised provision delivered by a college on behalf of a partner HEI is, but provision registered at FE colleges is not and is what is covered here.

There is a laudable volume of graphs and data in annexes, which means I won't do many but which are well worth reading if you like data (and if you don't like data, then hello, let me introduce myself. I'm Charlie, and I do data. Sorry about that.)

So what are the findings? Well, first, bear in mind that the survey has a response rate of 61 per cent in 2010/11, a good 20 per cent below the rate for DLHE. This equates to 14,210 responses.

In general, the report shows that this cohort were less likely to be in further study and more likely to be unemployed, than counterparts in HEIs. They're also likely to be paid a little less, although this is dependent on subject area, and in some cases does not hold.

The differences are not very great. For full-time first degree qualifiers, about the same proportion from each cohort went into work, and the difference comes in further study and employment rates. You can see the data in Figure 2 of the main report. Foundation degrees are a little more complex - the main difference is that the FE in HE cohort were more likely to be combining work and study, and the HE cohort more likely just to be in study.

But there are some things that bear examination.

The first is that, not surprisingly, things have not budged that much in the last three years from that data we have. Well, graduate outcomes have been stuck in recessionary inertia for a while, so this is not surprising.

The second though, is that unlike the outcomes for the DLHE cohort, the outcomes for this cohort (particularly for unemployment) may be worsening. Not a lot, but it bears close examination.

Here's the third.

This data comes from Table C8 in Annex C.

To put this a bit more starkly, if we were reporting the FE in HE graduates in Unistats, 32% of those employed were in professional level employment after six months. And HEFCE report some data from 2008/9 and 2009/10 which suggests the figures for this cohort have deteriorated.

Now, of course, most of these graduates took qualifications below first degree level - 60%, in fact. And the subject groups play an important part in outcomes - engineering outcomes for the FE in HE students, for example, look pretty good. And some occupations classed as below professional level are, nevertheless, the kind of jobs these courses aim at - beauty occupations, nursery nursing, teaching assistant roles, skilled trades. So we shouldn't expect this data to have parity with the pure HE data.

But what do we expect it to look like? I'd like to see the bars on the left of that graph look a little higher.

This is a really interesting report, and by understanding more about what's happening, we can help to understand the challenges for this cohort of students. Let's see what we can do to improve their career prospects.

What will the graduate jobs market be like in 2013?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 02 Jan 2013 11:06:00 +0000

Happy 2013, everyone.

Right, niceties over then, let's get on with the serious business of writing something people will take issue with. What's the graduate jobs market going to be like in 2013?

My regular reader will know that, ostensibly, I dislike making predictions, but for all that I seem rather fond of making them anyway. So, with the economy - both nationally and internationally - still pretty grim, it's time to examine how I think things might look this year.

As always, anything I say that is verifiable is based on information that is now out of date, and anything that is timely is merely speculative. This is the basis of all economic and labour market forecasting - the difference here is that I admit it up front. Oh yes, you can trust me to be honestly inaccurate.

The main trend is uncertainty, and that makes businesses reluctant to invest, to hire - and also to lay off staff. That said, business seems slightly more positive than they did at the end of 2011.

At present, manufacturing has not had a very good 2012 and the signs are that output will probably have been slightly down on 2011 - just. Confidence is down, although the energy and aerospace sectors seem to be doing better than most. Construction had another disappointing year. All in all, this means we're probably not going to see a dramatic recovery in science and engineering employment and consequently the jobs market for graduates in those disciplines is not likely to see a great change. Indeed, construction employers fear more job losses, which means that there is unlikely to be much respite for architects and civil engineers still suffering a battering since the start of recession. Aerospace would seem to be a better bet for prospective engineers at the moment, and consultancy also reports better conditions (that is probably more relevant for graduates with some experience). But there are some signs that some large firms might increase R&D spending this year (that would be more favourable for postgraduates).

In the finance and services industries, IT may see some growth - welcome for graduates in the discipline. Marketing seems to be doing reasonably well - the field has not done badly since recession and seems to be recruiting healthy numbers of graduates. As a whole, the finance industry is not expecting robust growth - activity is below pre-recession levels and so we don't expect a big upturn in recruitment. The public sector, of course, is expecting a difficult 2013.

In terms of recruitment, overall, things are expected to be broadly flat in the first half of the year. Firms are tentatively hoping for growth in the next 18 months or so and are consequently trying to keep skills, and most are maintaining graduate schemes to make sure that they don't experience skills shortages and to ensure succession planning. There are even some skills shortages in technical fields and some firms are reporting that the economy is making it hard to recruit as staff don't want to move.

Salaries are not expected to move much - although areas of skills shortages may see pay increases.

All in all, this is a very long winded way of saying 'I don't expect much to change in 2013' - or at least in the first half of the year. In fact, with recovery remaining slow and rocky, the current graduate jobs market will probably be the new status quo for the next three or four years - the comparatively benign market of 2007 being just a distant memory. So, when the DLHE data is released in June, I'd expect to see an unemployment rate between 8 and 9%, and starting salaries across the UK just below £20k. We may start to see a widening of disparities between regional labour markets, but that's a topic for another blog.

So, everyone have a good 2013 and look forward to a hard but rewarding year of helping graduates to enjoy good careers.

The Census and graduates

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 12 Dec 2012 14:02:00 +0000

Well, census data is available, and it's not just about how many people have come from overseas to live in the UK.

There's actually a section on the labour market. Now, obviously the data is not terribly detailed just yet, but there's some interesting information available.

Table KS501EW tells us that in England and Wales, 27.2% of the population aged 16-74 has a degree or equivalent - or higher. This is not exactly 'everyone has a degree nowadays' - although it does mean we have just over 12m people in the country with some kind of HE or equivalent qualification.

What makes this more interesting is Table KS608EW, which shows us that 40.9% of the working population is employed in occupational classes (from SOC) 1 to 3, or, what we class as 'professional employment' in the Key Information Set and on Unistats. These are, basically, what we now term 'graduate jobs'.

Does this mean we have too few graduates? I'm not sure - obviously everyone currently in professional occupations is not going to retire tomorrow (I've got a mortgage, for a start), and also we should not see the professionals as being solely for graduates. But it does reinforce the idea that we have a pretty high-skills labour market and that therefore we need a high-skills workforce. It's not exactly a new idea, but this is just one more piece of evidence showing how important our universities are.

Where else can you get a job outside London?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 06 Dec 2012 11:15:00 +0000

As a companion to yesterday's piece about cities outside London which produce graduates - and also because it's a bit harsh to leave out Liverpool and Newcastle - let's take a look at the other areas outside the capital which took on a lot of graduates last year.

Not surprisingly, Merseyside and Tyne and Wear, saw a significant number of graduates at all levels start work in the regions. Liverpool and Newcastle are both populous cities with relatively strong local labour markets. Also significant are affluent and densely-populated counties in the south-east that don't have many dominant population centres but do have lots of locations where graduates can find work - these regions tend not to take many doctoral graduates but do have an appetite for first degrees and other undergraduates. Lancashire covers a wide area and contains a number of large towns and hence takes on a lot of graduates, two thirds of whom were locally-domiciled last year. And the strong labour market for graduates in Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire has a lot to do with the local universities - both region took on more doctoral graduates than PGCE last year due to the presence of local research powerhouses.

There are many other regions for graduates to look for work, but this gives an idea of where concentrations of jobs might be found.

Getting a job outside London

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 15:50:00 +0000

I'll just pause for a moment whilst everyone who isn't reading the Chancellor's Autumn Statement and looking for some good news somewhere reels in shock at seeing a post.

Yes, we've been busy - you probably spotted Futuretrack, and we'll probably have more to say about that soon enough.

Anyway, one of the things I've been doing, as usual, is looking at one of my main interests in graduate LMI, which is regional labour markets.

We keep stressing that there are jobs outside London, although it's also fair to point out that London is a bit of a behemoth when it comes to finding work.

A lot of analyses of the graduate jobs market focuses on first degrees and misses the full range of qualifications that you can get from HE. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail, but here are the qualification breakdown for HE graduates who got jobs in the 8 of the cities which employed the largest number of new graduates (this doesn't correlate to population, by the way - Cardiff, punches particularly well above its weight here. It also, for dull reasons to do with the data I have available, does not include Liverpool and Newcastle which might possibly be in there if I had that data - and I have a suspicion looking at local data both Oxford and Cambridge might as well. Sorry.) For the record, the cities that fall just outside are, in order, Leicester, Aberdeen, Sheffield and Bristol. The data is from DLHE, of course.

Some things are plain. There were lots of jobs in Birtmingham - the 'other undergraduates' in this case seem to include a lot of nursing diplomas.

A lot of graduates get jobs in these cities. Literally thousands. In fact, a lot of postgraduates get jobs in them as well - Manchester had an unusually high proportion of total jobs available to doctoral graduates (probably something to do with have a very big research institution in the city), and Edinburgh and Glasgow look to be good places to go with a Masters. Twice as many new graduates went to work in Cardiff last year than in any other city in Wales

But what these figures show is that a lot of graduates - an awful lot of graduates - get jobs in these places. These figures don't show if those jobs are any good, of course (although mostly, they are - we'll get on to that later), but does suggest that some cities are good places to look for work, even at the moment.

And since we now know that the economy - and hence the jobs market - is set to be tough for some time, it's useful to know where to look for jobs.

Where are all the science jobs?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 15:29:00 +0000

Elizabeth on the Manchester Careers Blog has written this piece promoting the Manchester Engineering, Science and Technology Fair tomorrow.

Being both nerdy and slightly mischievous, I've taken the question at face value and produced this.

It's a breakdown of the top locations in the country where last year's PhD graduates were known to be working in science jobs (so not as researchers, and so this won't cover a lot of postdocs) after six months. You can have fun playing 'match the university to the local authority', although I'll go out on a limb and suggest the top two are quite easy.

(Other Greater London is not in the graph is the region is too broad - it comes in at Number 4).
Surrey, by the way, is largely private sector.

I wouldn't take this too seriously, but it does give you a clue about where in the country you might need to move to if you have a doctorate and want to enter science - and focus the mind if your city or region is not on that list.

Movement of graduates

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 08:17:00 +0000

As a follow-on to the last post I've been toying with a way to show graduate migration - a particular research interest of mine.

I've never been very happy with graphical depictions, although I've done it before in Graduate Market Trends.

Now, this graph takes some explaining.This is an examination of only UK domiciled graduates from a known region of domicile (the Channel Islands, Scillies and Isle of Man are also part of the dataset, but I've not put them on - they have a net loss of 21%, on a graduate population of 535). This doesn't mean that all regions except London are 'failing', it's just a way of showing how much the rest of the country contributes talent to the capital, and that the movement of graduates is more pronounced the closer to London that graduates originally lived. So this looks at where 2010/11 graduates were six months after leaving, compared to where they originally began

Yorkshire, which has a slight net gain of graduates, seemingly gets graduates moving in, largely from East Lancs and Lincolnshire - as you'd expect.

It's also not a graph of regional retention from institutions, which would look different.

Here's how it looks in simple number terms

I did one that also looks at percentages but I'm not sure that's as useful.

So, in brief, UK graduates come from all sorts of places and go to work in all sorts of places, but there's an early net movement to London.

'All the jobs are in London'

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 07:34:00 +0000

Myths about the graduate jobs market: 4

I've been saving this one because I wrote about it in What Do Graduates Do?

You sometimes hear the idea that 'all the jobs are in London'.

Here is a chart of where UK-domiciled graduates from 2010/11 were working six months after graduation.

Where were graduates from 2010/11 working six months after graduation?

London is, unsurprisingly, the most popular place for graduates to start work (and the proportion has gone up - slightly - in the last few years). It's got a good, diverse jobs market, and attractive salary offers. But most graduates are not in London.

Now, that doesn't mean that some sectors are not pretty strongly concentrated in London. Here's the same chart, but only for graduates entering the media and publishing industries.

Where were graduates from 2010/11, employed in the media, working six months after graduation?

Much higher - but still not a majority. And just for the purposes of balance, here's the breakdown for engineers.

Where were graduates from 2010/11, employed as engineers, working six months after graduation?

Definitely not a majority there.

Not all kinds of jobs are available in all parts of the country. London has the largest and most diverse graduate jobs market the UK has to offer. According to the ONS, London has a population of 7.8m, which is 12.6% of the total UK population.

And about 15% of graduates from 2010/11 were originally from London, using this year's DLHE data, so the region does import more graduates from elsewhere, as expected.

Nevertheless, most graduates don't work in the capital, and they don't need to. You don't have to go to London to get a job.

What do Graduates Do?

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:29:00 +0000

Normally at this point, I'd do a piece explaining what's in this year's What Do Graduates Do?, but Sean Coughlan at the BBC has written it already.

The basic story is that graduates did rather better last year than we feared they might, especially as we had the double dip recession.

A record number - 104,455 - were known to be in graduate-level employment after six months, and although unemployment nudged up a little, to 8.6%, it hasn't, as yet, got back to the heights of 2009, and is nowhere near the figures for the recessions in the 90s and 80s. It's by no means an easy jobs market for graduates, but most still get jobs, and most of those with jobs have what we will now call 'professional level' employment, in honour of KIS.

And remember - this is all after just 6 months of what will be, for most of these graduates, a career of at least 45 years.

We've done quite a bit of work on regional data this year, and I wrote a piece on it in the publication (no spoilers), and Jen has done a super redesign ahead of the big 2013 one that is coming when SOC2010 comes into use and all the data changes a lot. Presenting the data in graph format has always been something we've struggled with, but Jen has taken her design sensibilities to it and come up with something elegant, and I think it looks excellent.

But if anyone has any suggestions or feedback in advance of the big new redesign, we'd be delighted to hear them.

None of this, of course, would be possible without our friends and HESA and AGCAS (and as a brutal punishment for their efforts, this edition contains photos of all the AGCAS writers - I remain unillustrated so the book will not serve as a device to frighten small children away from the fire) so thanks, as always, go to them.

The next few months look as if they may be a little more of the same, so as things stand I wouldn't be surprised if 2011/12's figures look quite similar - but I guess we'll find out next year.

"You need to do a vocational degree to get a job"

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 11:24:00 +0000

Myths about the graduate jobs market: Number 3

Another simple diagram.

Unemployment rates for psychology and civil engineering graduates after six months.

There were over 12,400 graduates in psychology last year, and they went into all sorts of roles - the degree isn't really a vocational one in the conventional sense. Civil engineering is a highly vocational degree which, before the recession, enjoyed enviably low unemployment rates.

But unfortunately, because the construction industry has suffered especially badly during the recession, the unemployment rate for civil engineering graduates has shot up since the downturn began (fortunately, it seems to be falling again). A lot of good graduates from excellent civil engineering courses have struggled to find jobs through no fault of their own - architecture has also had the same issues.

Now, these are two extreme examples, and should not be used to generalise to the idea that all vocational degrees are worse than non-vocational, but it does show that you simply can't point at a difficult jobs market and pronounce that if only everyone did vocational degrees, then graduates would get jobs more easily. The argument falls apart if particular sectors hit trouble and graduates trained in relevant fields start to struggle in the jobs market.

Graduates from subjects, like psychology, who have the broad training to adapt to setbacks in the jobs market and to look elsewhere, have often fared better than those with excellent training in roles that are currently in short supply. That doesn't mean, of course, that civil engineering will maintain a high unemployment rate. Job conditions are improving. Students and institutions will adapt and learn to take their high-quality skills to other industries, who will get access to people with training that has been in short supply in the wider economy.

Of course - and particularly relevant just at the moment - this data could also be used, were you so inclined, to argue that it is dangerous to judge the quality of a degree or course simply from uncontextualised early information on jobs outcomes. I couldn't possibly comment.

UK graduate premium has increased

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:14:00 +0000

A very interesting piece of data from the new Education at a Glance concerns the UK's graduate premium - the relative earnings boost experienced by holders of a degree.

It's gone up, and is now the highest for over a decade.

Here is the graph

All data from 2000 comes from the OECD's Education At A Glance 2012, and the 1997-1999 data comes from a bit of statistical archaeology from the 2005 edition.

So, what we have here is the relative earnings, in the UK, of degree holders aged 25-64 compared to those in the jobs market with 'upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education' - or, in other words, A-level or equivalent.

So, since 1997, the premium pootled along within 3 percentage points of graduates earning about 60% more than A-level holders - in other words, probably within statistical bounds of being more-or-less static. It then dropped as the recession began, as the graduate-heavy finance and engineering sectors took a pounding but has increased sharply until 2010, where it stood at the highest for over a decade.

It's probable that what this represents, at least in part, is the ever-increasing disadvantage to being less educated in a tricky jobs market - it doesn't mean degree holders have had enjoyed marvellous pay rises. And we must be careful to draw firm conclusions from a single data source, no matter how thorough, reputable and impartial the OECD is.

But it does demonstrate that a UK degree is valuable, and that anyone wishing to suggest that the value of a degree is reducing needs very convincing evidence to demonstrate it.

Education At A Glance

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 15:58:00 +0000

Whilst I was out of action, the annual OECD publication, 'Education At A Glance' came out, with international comparisons of all sorts of data in it as per usual.

There's all sorts of fascinating stuff this time, including an attempt to examine the social benefits of education (degree holders more likely to vote, for example).

The data also seem to show an increase in the wage premium for degree holders in the UK since the recession began (see Table 8.2A). This is a predictable result of job losses for those with lower qualifications, leading to a degree having more relative value to the holders.

But one thing that struck me was the data on unemployment rates by qualification levels, which gives this graph.

This is a good demonstration of how valuable a degree has been in the recession - and how hard it's been on people with lower qualifications.

Charlie Is No Longer Broken

noreply@blogger.com (Charlie Ball) — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:28:00 +0000

File under 'tedious personal detail', but I'm now back (actually, I was back last week but spent it travelling up and down the country talking to people - hello to Leeds Trinity and Queen's College London, where I was giving talks on the current and future state of the graduate labour market, and what you might need to think about now, if you're going to be applying for jobs after university, respectively.

There'll be some changes around here soon, but we'll get to that in good time. At present, we're looking at the current state of the jobs market for graduates. It looks as if things might have got a little more difficult (not unreasonably so, but a bit tougher) in the early part of 2012, and we are waiting to hear how employers saw the summer.

The Bank of England Agents Summaries current suggest that uncertainty is leading employers to defer changes in employment (for good or ill) for the time being, but that suppliers to the public sector (unsurprisingly) might be reducing employment - this may affect graduates. On the bright side there may be job creation in some areas of the finance industry (compliance, risk management), and I am hearing that recruitment in other parts of the finance industry may have held up well so far this year.

So, at the moment, it looks a little as if 2012 might be more of the same for graduates - not easy, but not impossible to find work. We'll keep an eye on things.