GRADUATE VACANCIES AND SALARIES WILL RISE IN 2013, NEW SURVEY PREDICTS
There could finally be some good news on the horizon for the UK’s job-seeking graduates – a new survey of the country’s top employers suggests that the number of vacancies will rise by 9% this year, following a slump in 2012.
The report comes from the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), which interviewed 197 big graduate employers about their plans for hiring young employees in 2013. As well as hiring more graduates, the companies questionned said they also intended to pay their young staff more. Across this group, the average salary will jump by 1.7% to £26,500 with particularly good news for those hoping to go into finance and investment banking, where the average salary is a whopping £38,250 (yes, really). This is the first year that the average graduate wage has risen since 2008 – it was frozen during 2009, 2010 and 2011. Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the AGR, said:
“The results indicate a renewed level of optimism among organisations for the year ahead. With the graduate job market inextricably linked to business confidence, it’s reassuring to see that employers are committed to investing in graduate talent despite the backdrop of continuing global economic uncertainty.
“It’s also encouraging to see the starting salary rise and the prediction it will continue to increase this year to £26,500, following three years of standstill. The difficult economic climate means that the war for talent is more important than ever before, as organisations look to recruit and retain people who will give them a competitive edge.
“With the graduate job market inextricably linked to business confidence, it is reassuring to see that employers are committed to investing in graduate talent despite the backdrop of continuing global economic uncertainty. I appreciate that businesses, ever more so in the current climate, need to think very carefully about where to invest.”
This upward trend among the big employers is certainly good news for job-seeking graduates – but it is unlikely that many of Graduate Fog’s users will be celebrating just yet. Many of you have said before that that surveys like this – of the big graduate recruiters – are far from representative of the true situation faced by the majority of UK graduates.
The subject of the supposedly “average” graduate salary has been the cause of fierce debate on Graduate Fog in the past – as many of you insist you are earning nowhere near the figures quoted by reports like this one.
Many of you feel that the supposed “average” graduate salary is really just an average of some of the best-paying graduate schemes around, with the UK’s biggest employers. Most entry level jobs for graduates pay nowhere near £26,500. Many of you say you are thrilled to be paid the minimum wage – let alone anything close to £20,000.
And of course that’s before we’ve even touched on the tens of thousands of you currently working for free (or expenses-only) doing unpaid internships. Are these new figures really a sign that things are getting better for graduates – or only those lucky enough to find a place on one of the big graduate schemes?
*WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF THESE NEW FIGURES?
Are you pleased to hear that the number of graduate vacancies appears to be on the rise – and that graduate salaries will be growing too? Or are you sceptical about these figures – and whether they truly apply to all graduates, or are only representative of the small number of graduates who are lucky enough to find a place on one of the big graduate schemes?
While doing a Q & A session as Milkround’s panellist yesterday, I said I thought the graduate market was still in the doldrums. I can’t see how it can be any better, in the immediate aftermath of 3 large retailers going bust and Cameron suggesting we might be out of the EU by 2017.
At a guess, demand will be subdued but opportunity levels will be at least as high as during 2012.
Social demographics are definitely on the side of young job applicants. There’s a “surprise” shortfall in the number now applying to university (well the politicians are surprised, no-one else is)that may help those about to graduate. And finally, there always are SOME new grad opportunities, however bad the jobs market is.
Going into finance is not attractive to graduates at the moment. With 40,000 jobs lost in the UK alone with another god knows how many. Graduates are better to go towards IT related jobs as it is only going to get bigger. A friend is now 24 in IT sales (3 years in position) and is earning £350k approx with commission.
who is this company who pay graduates £26,000? that’s a myth, unless it’s a very niche market.
pray tell please, and i’ll consider retraining.
TfL offering £25k and free Oyster card for two – that’s worth £26k at least.
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/microsites/graduates/12.aspx
The AGR Survey is welcome news to those final year students planning on joining graduate schemes in the Summer, however they should not be complacent in their job hunting strategy. Competition will still be fierce with over 500,000 final year students chasing 21,061 graduate scheme vacancies — so that means they’ll be joining a queue of at least 23 applicants per vacancy.
GRB advises students to start looking early and most importantly widen their job search beyond the traditional scheme recruiters. According to Futuretrack, 40% of last year’s graduates launched their career with firms not offering schemes. Many of these firms (which include FTSE100) use recruitment consultancies like GRB, so they could be discovering jobs fewer graduates will be applying for and massively increasing their chances of success.
Yeah, I’m always surprised to hear of final years in Social Sciences like me, who’ve only applied to a few grad schemes, and complacently and confidently think they’ll easily get temp admin work as a stopgap if they don’t get them (some of these people have no admin experience, and a few had no work experience at all, so were likely to struggle with getting the attention of agencies).
I’ve always felt that “expecting” to get onto one of those competitive high-paying graduate schemes – or become a barrister, paid journalist etc (particularly without savings or wealth to aid you) – is a little bit like “expecting” to win the lottery or become a successful rock star. (Well the odds are higher than the lottery at least…) Obviously some people do, but it’s hardly something that can become a confident part of a life plan.
I don’t think many graduates are naive enough to expect to walk into their first job and earn £26,000, unless it is with a big, internationally renowned firm. The worst thing this report could do is make grads shy away from applying for positions less than this because they read somewhere that that is what everyone else is earning.
There’s got to be some truth in the story of growing optimism about graduate employers recruiting more than last year and the rise in average salaries – let’s celebrate the graduates who succeed in getting s good start. However, let’s remember the tens of thousands who have graduated since 2007 and have not been able to begin a graduate career.