One in 10 students who will graduate from UK universities this summer are planning to leave the country for better job opportunities, according to a new survey.
Research conducted by High Fliers Research has revealed that the proportion of final-year students who said they will look for a job overseas has risen by a third in just two years, from 7.8 per cent in 2024 to 10.2 per cent this year.
Martin Birchall, founder of graduate recruitment research firm High Fliers, told The Times: “This is probably the worst time in the last 30 years to be leaving university.
“The prospects of landing a job this summer are the lowest they’ve been in all the years we’ve been doing this tracking [since 1995].”
This year’s study saw High Fliers interview over 15,000 students across 30 universities, including Oxford, Cambridge, Warwick, Durham, the London School of Economics and Edinburgh.
Just 27 per cent of students said they had secured a job in the UK, or elsewhere, for September.
Previously it was around 35 to 40 per cent, but fell to 23 per cent during the pandemic.
Mr Birchall added: “It’s the second lowest it’s ever been and yet this cohort appears to have done more applications and more engagement with employers.
“They’ve taken part in record numbers of career activities, and more than ever before they started early. Over half of respondents had started job hunting in their first year.”
James Reed, the chief executive of Reed recruitment company, told The Times: “More graduates are looking overseas because the UK entry-level jobs market has become exceptionally tough.
“We’ve seen a significant decline in graduate vacancies in recent years, with the number of graduate roles on Reed.co.uk falling from 180,000 four years ago to 50,000 last year. This means competition for the roles that remain is intense.”
The findings come shortly after a bombshell review found the youth unemployment crisis is costing the UK £125bn a year, as the number of young people not in work or education reached more than 1 million for the first time since 2013.
The eye-watering figure, which is more than the country spends on education and almost double the defence budget, is one of a number of stark revelations in last month’s report by Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary, who warned that Britain is in danger of creating a “lost generation” unless it takes serious action to tackle the issue.
The growing Neet crisis – which refers to the number of 16- to 24-year-olds not in education, employment, or training – is the consequence of a “whole-system failure”, said Mr Milburn, that has resulted in a lack of entry-level jobs for young people.
Mr Milburn warned that without urgent action, the number of young people who are Neet will rise from one in eight to one in six by 2031, affecting 1.25 million young people.
Sir Keir Starmer described Mr Milburn’s report as “sobering”, and said he “will not allow a lost generation”.
