GCCA | Graduate Careers Council of Australia

Graduate Careers Australia

ergo - Number 94 March 2004

Graduate Prospects Remain Robust

The Graduate Destination Survey (GDS) is conducted annually by the Graduate Careers Council of Australia (GCCA) in co-operation with all Australian universities. The GDS tracks the activities of new university graduates who completed their qualifications in the previous calendar year. In 2003, information from over 107,000 new graduates was analysed for this new report.

The Main Findings
Figures released from the 2003 Graduate Destination Survey suggest that employment prospects for new bachelor degree graduates remain robust despite a small rise in the percentage still seeking employment.
Some of the other main points to come from the latest collection of data are that:

• Of bachelor degree graduates who were available for full-time employment in 2003, 80.1 per cent (81.3 per cent in 2002) were in full-time employment within four months of completing their degrees
• A further 12.1 per cent (11.2 per cent in 2002) were working on a part-time or casual basis while continuing to seek full-time employment
• Of bachelor degree graduates who were available for full-time employment in 2003, 7.8 per cent (7.5 per cent in 2002) were not working and still looking for full-time employment at the time of the survey
• Ms Cindy Tilbrook, Executive Director of the GCCA, said “While graduate employment prospects improved and consolidated between 1999 and 2001, they fell slightly in 2002 and again in 2003. In this regard, the graduate labour market in Australia has followed the pattern set in the graduate market internationally, which has been depressed over the last few years. However, overall employment prospects remain excellent for new graduates”
• More than one in five respondents, or 22.8 per cent (24.1 per cent in 2002) were undertaking further full-time study after completing their qualification. Males were more likely than females to have continued in full-time study
• The median annual starting salary for bachelor degree graduates in their first full-time employment was $37,000 ($35,500 in 2002). This was 82.0 per cent of average earnings, down from 82.7 per cent last year, 85.8 per cent in 2001, and 84.2 per cent in 2000 but up on 81.6 per cent in 1999
• Males earned a starting salary of $38,000 (up from $37,000 in 2002) and females earned $36,300 (up from $35,000 in 2002). Differences in starting salaries between males and females can be partly explained in terms of the differing enrolment and employment profiles of male and female students
• Fields of study with high proportions in full-time employment at the time of the GDS included pharmacy (99.5 per cent), medicine (98.0 per cent), initial nursing education (97.5 per cent), and post-initial nursing education (97.1 per cent)
• Respondents in visual and performing arts, physics, psychology, humanities, mathematics, computer science, life sciences and social science were most likely to have been seeking full-time employment when surveyed
• At $55,000, dentistry graduates earned the highest median starting salary
• The top ranked fields in terms of starting salary were dentistry, optometry, medicine, engineering and education
• Overall satisfaction with courses as measured by the Course Experience Questionnaire (CEQ) component of the GDS remains at a high level, with 89.8 per cent of graduates expressing broad satisfaction with their courses.

Graduate Unemployment Lower
Cindy Tilbrook adds “University graduates enjoy a privileged position in the labour market and will continue to see the rewards of their higher education as their careers unfold. The most recent Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data (May 2002) show that just 2.9 per cent of those in the general population with bachelor degrees were unemployed, less than half the figure for the labour force as a whole.”

The Grad Files and GradStats
These figures appear in the Graduate Careers Council of Australia’s new summary publications for 2003, GradStats and The Grad Files. GradStats is a general summary of the GDS while The Grad Files is aimed at prospective university students and gives an overview of the type of work that newly employed graduates enter. You can read more about the results of the 2003 Graduate Destination Survey in The Grad Files, found here .