How many new graduates are in jobs which are classified as 'graduate occupations'?
The biggest difficulty faced by potential answers to this question is defining a 'graduate job'. The report, Seven Years On: Graduate careers in a changing labour market, by Professor Peter Elias of the University of Warwick, and Professor Kate Purcell of the University of the West of England, put forward a new system of definitions of categories in an attempt to create a definitive classification of the kind of jobs that graduates go on to do. Jobs have been grouped into one of five different job categories. The choice of category was based on a number of factors, with the proportion of people in the population at large with degrees in each category a key factor. Based on this classification system, six months after graduating, almost exactly two-thirds of UK-domiciled working graduates (66.5%) from 2006/7 were working in the UK in graduate jobs. This equates to around 97,895 first degree graduates – up on previous years.
It is important to note that many graduates need time to settle down in the labour market and initial underemployment is not a reliable indicator of longer term labour market outcomes. Research such as Seven Years On and Class Of '99 shows that the number of graduates in non-graduate jobs moving into graduate occupations increases rapidly in the first few years after graduation.
See also how do graduates progress in the job market?
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