One thing many young people (and their parents) ask about different degree courses is what is their chance of a job at the end.

With an unstable economic situatio, this is not such an easy question to answer – or to find out. But we do have access to a range of statistics that can help to understand trends and make a best guess.

The Office of National Statistics collects and publishes data about graduate employment. This video was published on their YouTube channel in February 2012, and provides an update on the latest figures for 2011.

They draw attention to the fact that “the percentage of recent graduates, people who completed a degree or higher education qualification within the last six years, employed in lower skilled jobs has increased from around 26.7% in 2001, or just over one in every four recent graduates, to around 35.9%, or more than one in three recent graduates in the final quarter of 2011.”

Higher skill jobs, they explain “generally require competence through post-compulsory education whereas lower skill jobs tend to require competence only through compulsory education.” You can download the ONS report on ‘Graduates in the labour market – 2012’ and, if you wish, the statistics from which they developed the report.

It is worth remembering that despite these figures, employment rates for graduates remain higher than for those with lower qualifications.

As you can see, although the prospects for employment for recent graduates, defined as those who have graduated in the six years previous to the survey data, have declined, they are still only a little worse than for all graduates and considerably better than for non-graduates.

You can download the data from ONS on which they based this chart and store it in your research folder.

Graduate destination data

In 2009/10, 63% of full-time first degree graduates whose destinations were known were in employment only, 7% were in a combination of employment and study, 16% were in further study only, and 9% were assumed to be unemployed.

According to the data:

• The proportion of graduates in employment and/or study has decreased.
• The proportion who were assumed to be unemployed has increased.
• Of those full-time, first degree, graduates living in the UK, the mean salary has increased from £18,500 in 2005/06 to £20,000 in 2009/10.
• Of the full-time, first degree graduates who entered employment in the UK, Associate professional & technical occupations represented the largest proportion, with Professional occupations having the second largest proportion, a trend which remained constant across the 5 year time period.
• The proportion of part-time first degree leavers in employment and/or further study decreased.
• The proportion of postgraduate leavers (both full-time and part-time, excluding Postgraduate Certificate in Education) in employment and/or further study has decreased steadily since 2005/06.

For more information on the graduate destinations in figures have a look at the HESA data online.

Futuretrack is an academic research study exploring the relationship between higher education, career decision-making and labour market opportunities. Graduate employment has become a heated issue in media and academic debates among those concerned with the relationship between higher education and the labour market. But what are recent graduates doing? Is it now necessary to have more than just a degree? Are people who didn’t go into higher education and got a job after school at a disadvantage or advantage relative to graduates? Who gets the good jobs and who ends up under-employed, and just what is ‘graduate employability’?

For more on the Futuretrack go to the project website. You can also follow the Futuretrack project on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn for up-to-date information.