UK to see increase in graduate jobs in 2015

Graduate recruitment among the UK’s top employers is set to reach its highest level for over a decade in 2015, according to the latest report by High Fliers Research.

The annual study of 100 leading graduate employers found that recruitment increased by 7.9% in 2014, and a further increase of 8.1% is expected this year.

The median starting salary for graduates will also increase to £30,000 this year (around US$45,500), after a long period which saw no salary increases.

According to the study, the biggest graduate recruiters in 2015 will be Teach First (2,060 vacancies), PwC (1,570) and Deloitte (1,100). The firms paying the highest published starting salaries are Aldi and the European Commission.

The study also found that employers are increasingly offering paid work placements, with 13,049 such positions available to students and graduates this year.

Martin Birchall, managing director of High Fliers, commented that: "It’s great news that students leaving university this summer who’ve paid higher tuition fees for their degrees will be emerging into the most buoyant graduate job market for over a decade."

In 2010, the UK government increased university fees in England to £9,000 (US$13,600) a year, making the country one of the most expensive places in Europe to study.

Our author Peter J. Sloane has written about the problem of university graduates ending up in jobs that do not make full use of their education. He writes that "policymakers should be more concerned about any evidence of widespread overskilling, which is likely to be harmful both to the welfare of employees and to the interests of employers, than overeducation on its own."

Read more at BBC News and download the High Fliers report here.

Related articles:
Overeducation, skill matches, and labor market outcomes for college graduates, by Peter J. Sloane
Do firms benefit from apprenticeship investments? by Robert Lerman