Since we wrote our New Year article about the future of the UK graduate jobs market back in January, there have been a few developments worthy of a mention.
We’re now over halfway through 2015, so let’s take a look at a few bits of news from the graduate jobs market which you might have missed over the last couple of months….
Ladies Land More Jobs – But Male Graduates Make More Money
New figures from the Higher Education Statistics Agency reveal that female graduates are slightly better at landing jobs than their male counterparts.
Exactly three quarters of women who graduated last summer had found a full or part time job within six months of leaving university. Men, however, had a success rate of just over 7 in 10 during the same time period, meaning that female graduates of last summer were around 4 per cent better at securing a job than were men.
Just six per cent of women still hadn’t found a job by the time the survey was carried out, compared with eight per cent of male graduates.
On the other side of the coin, the male graduates who did manage to find a job within six months of graduating achieved an average starting salary of £21,000 compared with a less attractive £20,000 for female graduates.
The Higher Education Statistics Agency report, which surveyed over 420,000 students from UK universities, found that the disparity in wages became even more pronounced further up the salary scale for graduates.
Male graduates were found to be more likely to be working in professional jobs, so, over 1 in 10 men were earning salaries of between £30,000 and £40,000, compared with just 1 in 20 women.
Also, for every four men who were earning over £40,000 in their new jobs, just one female could achieve the same salary.
The Best & Worst Cities To Find Graduate Jobs In The UK
In other graduate job news, a further survey from last month reveals some of the best – and worst – cities in the UK where job seekers can try to find a graduate job. As with the wider jobs market in the UK, there’s still a significant North/South divide, with only Manchester flying the flag for the north in the top ten best cities for graduate jobs.
Perhaps counter-intuitively, the research – carried out by job search engine Adzuna – doesn’t feature London as a top ten best city to find graduate roles. Cambridge comes out on top of the pile with only 0.09 applicants for each graduate job – followed closely by Guildford, Reading, Oxford and Winchester.
On the flipside, Sunderland is currently the toughest city to try to land a graduate job, with an average of 5 graduates competing for each opportunity. Other cities with strong competition for graduate vacancies include Hull, Bradford and Belfast.
Here are the complete lists of Adzuna’s best and worst cities to find graduate jobs in the UK…
NB: The figures in brackets after each city represent how many candidates are chasing each graduate job vacancy.
Top Ten Best Cities To Find Graduate Jobs:
- Cambridge (0.09)
- Guildford (0.12)
- Reading (0.16)
- Oxford (0.17)
- Winchester (0.23)
- Exeter (0.24)
- Bristol (0.32)
- Manchester (0.33)
Joint 9. Crawley (0.35)
Joint 9. Swindon (0.35)
Top Ten Worst Cities To Find Graduate Jobs:
- Sunderland (5.07)
- Hull (3.89)
- Bradford (3.87)
- Rochdale (3.00)
- The Wirral (2.85)
- Belfast (2.66)
- Wolverhampton (2.60)
- Swansea (2.45)
- Middlesbrough (2.42)
- Salford (2.02)
Updated Outlook For The UK Graduate Jobs Market
The mood in the UK graduate job market continues to improve, with almost 16,000 opportunities advertised in May this year, up over 15 per cent on this time twelve months ago, when there were fewer than 14,000 graduate jobs up for grabs.
Here’s hoping that the future for Britain’s graduate job prospects just keeps on getting rosier and rosier year on year…
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