Graduate jobs for class of ’09 shrink by 28%

A new graduate market update - ‘The Graduate Market in 2009' - from High Fliers Research shows that graduate vacancies at Britain's top hundred employers have been cut by 28%.

This is the level of reduction since the latest round of graduate recruitment began last September, and it means that more than 5,500 graduate vacancies have now been cancelled or will be left unfilled this year.

Almost two-thirds of employers have now downgraded their 2009 targets, with half of these cutting at least 50 places from their graduate schemes.

The hardest-hit sectors include investment banking, IT & telecoms and engineering/industry, where entry-level vacancies have been reduced by 56%, 51% and 41% respectively.

The only sector to have shown significant (double-digit) growth in graduate vacancies over the last year is the armed forces, although retailing, the public sector and, perhaps surprisingly, the media have also recorded more modest increases.

On average, leading UK employers received 45 applications for each graduate position this year - significantly up from 35 last year.

And although investment banking saw an overall fall in graduate applications, it was still the most competitive sector, averaging over 100 applications per vacancy.

This year's biggest graduate recruiters are the accountancy profession (over 3,200 graduate positions) and the public sector (over 1,800 positions).

Britain's top employers originally intended to hire almost 20,000 graduates this year, but the actual number recruited to start work later this year remains under 15,000.

Looking forward to next year, around half (49%) of Britain's top employers expect to hire a similar number of graduates to this year.  18% anticipate hiring more, while the same proportion plan to take on less.  One in ten remain uncertain about their intentions, and one in twenty won't be recruiting any graduates at all.

High Fliers Research MD Martin Birchall adds: "With a record number of students graduating from UK universities this summer, these substantial cuts in graduate recruitment at Britain's best-known and most sought-after employees couldn't have come at a worse time.

"The ‘Class of 2009' are facing one of the toughest job markets of the last two decades, and there is now a very real prospect that tens of thousands of new graduates will be left unemployed after leaving university this year.

"Many top employers have received a record number of applications for their 2009 graduate vacancies, and almost all have now either filled their places or have closed off their application process.  For graduates looking for work in the coming months, the chances of landing a last-minute place with a major national or international employer now seem very slim."