Whats going to happen to the graduate job market University of Manchester Careers Blog

Whats going to happen to the graduate job market University of Manchester Careers Blog I cant pretend to know whats going to happen in the UK in the next half hour, never mind the next 6 months other than Im pretty sure well soon hear lots of press stories and anecdotes about problems in the job market (theyve started already). Were in unprecedented times so history may not be an accurate predictor of whats to come, but its worth looking at what happened to the graduate job market in the last recession. The press quickly dubbed the graduating classes of 2007/8/9   The Lost Generation, with story after story about how there were no jobs out there. These certainly were tougher times and some types of work were in very short supply, which caused some graduates real problems. However, to put these stories of job market meltdown into perspective, this is what happened to the number of vacancies for full-time graduate jobs which came into the Careers Service at the University of Manchester over the early years of the recession and the preceding years: You can see that the number of ads we received did drop but 2008/9 was still above the number of ads we received in 2004/5. And thats as bad as it got for us. Whats happened since: Unfortunately, we changed our database and the way we classified ads at that point, so Ive got a year missing but heres our latest data: You can see we quickly recovered and we soon exceeded our highest point over the previous 10 years. Whats more, this year has been about 10% up on last year so far. Were certainly not complacent and well continue to track vacancies as they come in to us, to look for any early warning signs of problems emerging. However, weve learnt that you cant immediately assume that what you read about graduate jobs in the press is the whole story Graduate jobs down a bit, but still lots to play for is never going to make it as a headline. Well keep you updated with any trends as they emerge, but more importantly, were here if any University of Manchester student or recent graduate (within the last two years) needs us talk to us in person, by email, by phone, by Skype or by online chat, all through the summer and beyond. Right, now Im off back to social media to find out what on earths happened since I started writing this post Save Save All Graduate International Postgraduate Undergraduate Graduate jobs job hunting job market