Cuts could lead to record graduate unemployment, warns HECSU

The Higher Education Careers Services Unit is warning that public-sector budget cuts could take the graduate unemployment rate to unprecedentedly high levels in excess of 20%.  With a higher proportion of the public sector qualified to degree level than in the private sector, it's feared that the recently-announced cuts could have a disproportionate impact on graduate employment.

HECSU deputy research director Charlie Ball notes that some 39,000 ‘non-frontline' public-sector jobs are taken up by UK-domiciled graduates each year - and that even if a fifth of these were to go and not be replaced, this would more than double graduate unemployment for the affected cohort in one fell swoop, pushing graduate unemployment over the 20% mark and towards the 25% level.

"The highest unemployment rate, for graduates six months after graduating, ever recorded in the UK was 13.5% at the start of 1983," he says.  "We're expecting over 10% unemployment next year anyway, and it would not take much of a shock to the graduate jobs market to make the next few years some of the toughest ever experienced.  In fact, the loss of around 13,000 of these jobs - a third of the total - would probably be more than enough to make the following year a record graduate unemployment rate."

He estimates that even if a third of the 725,000 public-sector jobs predicted to be lost by the CIPD were to go, then about 240,000 graduates could lose their jobs over the next four years - the equivalent of an entire year's graduating cohort.  And, with the public sector employing a disproportionate number of graduates outside London, it's the regions that stand to face the biggest challenge.