I was under the mistaken belief that February was a short month that probably wouldn't see much going on in the world of careers and employability studies. Perhaps researchers have been maddened by the leap year, because we've seen a series of interesting pieces this month.
Characteristics of young unemployed people was the big graduate story for February — the one showing that graduates were as likely to be unemployed as people who have A-levels. This has been a fascinating demonstration of how you can be 100% factually accurate in reporting statistics and yet come to a misleading conclusion.
The statistic that got everyone excited was about 21-year-olds who had left university with a degree, around 24.8% were unemployed as they started looking for work.
But, who is unemployed? This is the Labour Force Survey, and so 'unemployed' means: "Without a job, have been actively seeking work in the past four weeks and are available to start work in the next two weeks", or "out of work, have found a job and are waiting to start it in the next two weeks."
In the case of graduates, this means that if you have a job or starting a course in, say, September, but looking for a few weeks work in the summer, you're unemployed. If you waited until your finals were done, looked for a job, and have one to start next week – you are unemployed.
In 2009/10, 14% of first degree graduates went on to do further study after graduation. I'm pretty sure their courses didn't all start in July. This definition is going to cover a lot of people who have confirmed destinations.
We also know that at the start of 2011, the proportion of graduates who had left university six months previously and were still out of work was 8.5%. Unless something profoundly odd happened in the graduate employment market in 2011, most graduates who are unemployed when they leave university found a job by Christmas or have embarked on further study.
Finally, not all graduates are 21 when they leave university. The unemployment rate for 22-year-olds was 16% — and for 23-year-olds, it was down to 8.6% — rather close to that figure after six months, and close to the overall UK unemployment rate. Certainly this is higher than we'd like, but not a harbinger of graduate apocalypse.
Let's ask this simple question; what proportion of graduates should have something firm organised for themselves as soon as they graduate and — considering there is a tight market for jobs and postgraduate funding — what's an acceptable figure?
So, is this report useful? It depends. It's an interesting piece of analysis and it highlights all sorts of issues with youth unemployment, but says very little about the situation for graduates, apart from that at present, the unemployment rate for graduates, aged 24, is 4.9%. The overall UK unemployment rate for all employees across all age groups is currently 8.4%. Those look like good odds to me.
What should we be looking at?
In a report like this, it's the methodology because unless you're really sure you know what the terms really mean, there's a danger of misinterpretation (the ONS did a nice little podcast of this data which explains some of these issues). The other thing to look at is the raw data, which can be downloaded throughout the report at appropriate places. But if you want to know about the situation for graduates, you should be looking at a different report.
Pass, or rewrite?
The report is fine as an examination of youth unemployment, even if it's not very enlightening about the prospects for graduates. But it does go to show how easy it is to take a single figure out of context.
The Wilson Review is not a revolutionary work, but is a handy reference guide to all the ways that academics and businesses work together.
Recruitment is a costly business. Every graduate recruiter wants to get the best people for their business and ensure they're not overlooking any promising talent.
Less highly publicised discussions were the questions on how to help students and small businesses come together, and the significant roles universities play in local economies. There is also an interesting section on postgraduate researchers, which comes in just as the postgraduate debate starts to heat up.
Charlie Ball is deputy research director at the Higher Education Careers Services Unit.
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