The Graduate Market in 2015
Changes to Graduate Vacancies 2005-2015 The period from 2005 to 2007 proved to be something of a boom in graduate recruitment – the number of vacancies for university-leavers at the UK’s leading graduate employers increased by more than 10% annually and there were more opportunities for graduates in each of the fourteen key industries and business sectors. But the onset of the global financial crisis and the recession that followed in the UK had a profound effect on the graduate market and graduate vacancies at organisations featured in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers fell by an unprecedented 23.3% in 2008 and 2009. Entry-level positions were cut in thirteen of the fourteen most sought-after employment sectors and, in all, some fifty-nine employers saw their graduate recruitment decline. The worst of the cuts took place at the investment banks, IT & telecoms firms, chemical & pharmaceuticals companies and within the media, where vacancies halved during the course of the two recruitment rounds. Just one employment area, the public sector, managed to increase its graduate recruitment over the period, stepping up vacancies by 45% during this two-year period, helped by the rapid expansion of the Teach First scheme. It is interesting to benchmark how graduate vacancies have changed over the last ten years (see Chart 2.10 ). This indexing of vacancies shows that during the two recruitment seasons between 2005 and 2007, opportunities for graduates grew by almost a quarter at Britain’s top employers, but that all of this growth and more was wiped out in the following two years, and by 2009 graduate recruitment had returned to a similar level to that recorded in 2004. Twelve months later, the graduate job market bounced back convincingly and vacancies grew by 12.6% in 2010, with a further increase of 2.8% in 2011. The recovery stalled again in 2012 but recruitment increased once more in 2013, taking vacancies to their highest level for five years. The significant 7.9% rise in graduate recruitment recorded in 2014 and the
Chart 2.10 Indexing Graduate Vacancies at the UK’s Top Employers 2005 to 2015
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Source - The Graduate Market in 2015
Source - The Graduate Market in 2015
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