Students who left university in 2009 – entering the worst jobs market for more than a decade – have seen their employment rate improve since graduating.
The latest longitudinal Destinations of Leavers of Higher Education survey found that the unemployment rate for graduates who left university in 2009 fell from 8.9% to 3.4% over the three years to 2012. It also showed that, between 2009 and 2012, the proportion of those in professional-level graduate jobs increased from 64% to 79%.
But what is buried in the small print, and what does this survey really mean for graduates?
A lot of evidence about early graduate careers comes from the annual Destination of Leavers of Higher Education (DLHE) survey, which comes out every year at the end of June. It's comprehensive and full of rich information about the first steps that graduates take when they leave their degrees. But it surveys people just six months after graduation, so it doesn't tell us about how graduates can expect to fare in the tricky early years of their career.
The longitudinal survey, however, reveals how these graduates are coping a little while later.
The basic findings are reasonably encouraging. As well as the unemployment rate falling, only 12% of those who were unemployed originally were still out of work three and a half years later. Of course, it's more than we'd like, but far less than we're often led to believe.
Of the graduates who walked into jobs within six months of leaving university, 64% were in professional-level employment; three years later, the figure was 79%. For graduates who are not in this level of job, there was a shift in the type of work they tend to do. The largest group of graduates in below-professional-level jobs are in office work; three years previously, the largest group of graduates at this level were in retail.
But is this data good? What can we do with it?
It's worth remembering that the new longitudinal survey is a sample. The methodology shows that a total of 62,205 people responded to the surveys across the years. Although that's a lot of people, allowing a good overview of the general cohort, the sample's too small to do some of the things we reliably and regularly do with the earlier destination data. Most notably, we can't make generalisations based on what subject graduates have studied.
So what does it actually tell us?
The most important message is that most graduates get jobs, and a lot of those jobs require a degree. This held true even in the most difficult jobs market that most of these graduates will live through. It also tells us that, even if graduates didn't get jobs straight away, they probably did three years later. And, even if that first job didn't seem to make much use of their degree, they weren't stuck in them for ever.
It also shows that, once you've got a job, you're more likely to stay employed. Even in the current jobs market, just 1.6% of full-time graduates from 2008-09 who were in full-time jobs after six months, were out of work three years later.
It's not easy to get a job, and the first few years after graduation are often a struggle, but the figures can help to reassure graduates that, with a bit of patience, it's possible to find work. That said, some graduates did stay unemployed, and some couldn't get the kind of job that they wanted. That should be a reminder that a degree does not, never has, and never will, provide anyone with an absolute guarantee of a good career. Students and graduates are always going to have to fight for jobs, and support services should always be there to help them do it.
Charlie Ball is deputy director of research at the Higher Education Careers Services Unit.
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