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Graduates struggle to find work
Despite a historic low in the rate of full-time employment for new graduates, people with degrees are still better off in the job market, official says.
By Andrew Bracey
New data has revealed the rate at which Australia’ s new bachelor degree students find full-time employment within four months of graduation has fallen to its lowest level since the economic recession of the early 1990s.
The latest figures, released last month by Graduate Careers Australia( GCA), suggest that just 71.3 per cent of new graduates have found full-time work – the lowest result since 1993 when the rate hit just 71.2 per cent.
University of Newcastle vice-chancellor professor Caroline McMillen
The Graduate Destinations 2013 report indicated that the rate of full-time employment for new graduates peaked at 85.2 per cent in 2008, in the lead up to the global financial crisis, but has dropped consistently each year since.
Based on a survey of more than 43,000 new graduates seeking full-time work in 2013, the GCA report found that more than 1 in 10 remained unemployed after four months.
A further 18.1 per cent of respondents reported working part time, representing the highest percentage of new graduates to be doing so in the past 24 years.
University of Newcastle vice-chancellor professor Caroline McMillen said the higher education sector should be“ alert but not alarmed” by the report, which she said reflected the difficult economic and labour market.
“ The unemployment rate for graduates is still about half that for the general population, so I think that in a difficult employment environment I would prefer to go into that with a degree – that still holds,” she said.
McMillen said most universities were already creating greater opportunities for work-integrated learning to increase the employment prospects of their graduates.
“ Whilst a degree helps employment, it does not guarantee employment … and the evidence certainly does suggest that engaging with the industry profession you’ re seeking to enter really does support employability, so I think for us that is the key.
“ It is a difficult economic landscape to read at the moment … but when the economy bounces back, employment generally bounces back – but we are of course in a tough fiscal environment and we may be in this for the next couple of years. Ultimately in a very competitive job market, qualifications are an asset.”
GCA strategy and policy adviser Bruce Guthrie said that despite the trends identified in the report, long-term unemployment should not be a major concern for new graduates, who he said were still well placed to reap the advantages of a university degree.
“ It is not that they’ re not getting [ fulltime ] jobs – it is just that it is taking them longer,” Guthrie said.“ What we’ re seeing is the lingering effects of the GFC, where we saw recruiters pulling out of the labour market, not wanting to be exposed to hiring too many new graduates. It is a classic case of increased supply and reduced demand … just as we saw during the early’ 90s recession.”
Guthrie said the trend was affecting some groups more significantly than others and that social sciences and humanities graduates were amongst the worst affected. In comparison, he said, the labour market prospects were brighter for engineering and health science graduates.
“ When we analyse the type of part-time work they are doing, a lot of it is in the professional area in which they trained, so it is about understanding in advance that it might take a little longer to find [ full-time ] work in some sectors,” he explained.“ It has always been the case though, even in good years, that it can take graduates in some sectors slightly longer on average than it might take engineers, doctors or health scientists, for example. That pattern is just exacerbated by the current labour market, which we are seeing is a little more conservative in its intake.” ■
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