WE KNEW IT! MOST GRADUATES EARN UNDER £20,000, NOT NEARLY £30,000
The real average graduate salary is nearly £10,000 a year less than previous figures have suggested, new figures reveal. Despite claims from the Association of Graduate Recruiters earlier this year that the average graduate wage is £29,000, it now seems that the true average wage is just under £20,000.
The fresh data helps shed some light on the huge discrepancy between what graduate employers say they’re paying their staff – and what graduates tell us you are actually earning. The difference has been a matter of fierce debate on Graduate Fog in recent months
(See our previous posts Average graduate salary is now £29,000 (er, on what planet?!) and Average graduate salary to hit £26,000 – but how many are really earning that much?)
Okay, some graduates start on £45,000 in the finance sector – but we speak to many more earning around the minimum wage, that’s if they’re even being paid at all (Interns, all wave to your employer who is paying you nothing).
A spokesperson for HECSU – who published the figures – told Graduate Fog:
“The AGR survey is fine as long as what you’re interested in is large graduate recruitment schemes for big household-name firms, usually based in London and with a heavy bias towards the finance industry.
“The survey is really strong on those, so if a graduate wants to get on a PWC management consultancy scheme and work in London , then it gives a decent guide to those salaries. But the survey doesn’t really cover small businesses or the public sector or much science, or the arts or social care or… you get the picture.
“Of course, most graduates don’t go onto big graduate recruitment schemes (the AGR survey covers about 10% of the jobs market by numbers), so as a real figure for what most graduates experience in the jobs market when they start out, it isn’t helpful.
“We prefer the DLHE data, which is not perfect, but covers over 75,000 graduates and looks across the whole spectrum of employees, from graduates working in Tescos to undersea geologists.
“Starting salaries have basically been static since the recession began – which is a few years now. Don’t expect to see the average starting salary for graduates to get above £20k for a little while, and especially not outside London or in Wales or Northern Ireland.”
So how much ARE graduates really earning? According to these numbers, the average wage for graduates six months after graduation was £19,935. Salaries in London were the highest at £22,707 – and in the rest of England the average was £18,991. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the figure was £20,509, £18,365 and £18,823 respectively.
The highest paid jobs were in management consultancy (£20,033), IT (£19,121) and HR (£18,413).
Clearly, these figures sound much more like it. But big questions remain. Why is it these inflated figures (from sources like the Association of Graduate Recruiters and High Fliers) that always appear in the press, and not the true figures? Who is it helping, to prevent that graduates are earning more than they actually are? Young people are making big decisions about spending a huge amount of money on expensive qualifications. Don’t they deserve to know the facts, to help them decide whether their investment is likely to pay off?
*HOW MUCH ARE YOU EARNING?
Are you happy with your salary? Did you think you’d be on a better wage after you graduated than you actually are? Do you feel you were misled – or did you just assume you’d be making decent money, once you had your degree?
These figures show that financially for most grads there’s no immediate salary “premium” for having a degree. The next question is whether having a degree improves your earning power 2 – 5 years after graduating and at later stages of your career.
There’s some research saying 7 years post graduation most grads earn more than most non-grads (even though important minorities – eg mature students – didn’t benefit from having done a degree).
If there is data saying graduates earn more than non-grads 7 years after graduation, it should be remembered that data is 7 or more years old.
Also, people often talk about “average” salaries as something they expect to get, forgetting that (depending on the type of average – I haven’t done stats for a while so forgive any errors), roughly half earn less than the average and half earn more.
Doesn’t make me feel so bad about me graduating 10 years ago and managing a good few years later to earn just under 20k. As for who benefits from the dodgy data – well clearly the government benefits in the whole fees debate. I certainly would have thought twice before taking on 12k of debt if the benefits were to be shown to be so marginal.
We’re also forgetting that there focusing on averages also obscures differences like what course and what university – both of which will have a big effect on earnings so if we were to take this into account we’d probably find that for someone studying Sociology at a uni outside the top 20 and working outside of London the earnings they can expect will probably be quite low – low enough to make university seem like a pretty poor option.
Is a degree worth £27,000? (exluding living costs).
@Me
Yes. I’d say it is. I wouldn’t feel complete without a degree.
It’s not hard at all the believe that the average is 30k when you see the number of grads starting on 40-60. There are a lot of people going into banking or consultancy who start on insanely high salaries. That pulls the average up. The average isn’t going to be what most people earn since it’s going to be pulled up by those high-flyers.
Maybe getting a better understanding of how numbers and statistics work would help people find employment…
If we take the median salery into account, it certainly isn’t 30-40k…
A few of the quotes from Tolle are almost exactly the words of Krishnamurti. But others seem to be from New Age Thought and some from Advaita. The difference between Tolle and Krishnamurti is that Tolle says there is a Self and that it survives death (if I understand him clearly) while K may not speak directly on the topic … it seems he always puts the question back on the reader, he appears to have more of a not-self view. Much like Buddha, he seems to deny the existence of the atman as the self … or jiva (soul). I tend to agree with the Buddhist / K view.
I think this depends on what area and subject you studied at University.
Design for instance, people expect graduates to Intern for a year in various different companies. When started your first paid graduate job the salary is on average around 15,000.
Design is flooded so I think companies feel that they can pay for cheap labour.
I thought this was a complete joke. I spent a year working minimum age as a customer assistant/cashier and then doing freelance design work at night.
I am against doing any work for free apart from volunteering for charities!
Four months ago I quit my customer service job then took a one month travel expenses paid internship in design because it would enhance my portfolio.
Last week I was offered a 1 year contract with another company. I’m now on 23,000.
It’s a simple case of a missing “‘s”. The average graduate salary is £29,000 but not all graduates get graduate jobs or even a job full stop. So yeah the average graduate’s salary is indeed much lower. University has inherent risk, you must weight up the probable outcomes and payback period and decide if it will be a gainful experience for you. The system is broken were after calculating this a deserving student would find it was not worth their time.
Well I have recently finished my degree and I am due to start on £19000 a year but I do have a couple of years experience within the industry already. Now my friend is of same level a couple years experience with no degree and has just accepted a job at £27000 a year so is there a need for a degree I say no not in all industries.
29k is not reflective of the average student’s expected income but of the average salary…