Graduate Careers Australiaergo - Number 87 June 2002Graduate Employment in 2001Every year the Graduate Careers Council of Australia (GCCA) collects data from new graduates, four months after the completion of their qualifications, in order to report on their earning and employment outcomes. Information on earnings, percentages in full- and part- time employment, state comparisons and changes over time are provided for each field of study and are published in annual reports. The first in the latest series of reports, Graduate Starting Salaries 2001, is to be released in mid-2002, and provides an in-depth look at the earnings of new graduates (aged 25 and under) in their first full-time employment in Australia from 1977 onwards, comparing state, gender and field of study differences.
Salaries, Employment by Field Of Study At the end of 2001, employment prospects continued to be positive for bachelor degree graduates, with the highest uptake rates coming from fields such as medicine, optometry and pharmacy. Despite a small drop of 0.9% from 83.1% in 2000, still more than four out of five (82.2%) graduates looking for full-time work were successful within the first four months after graduation. The pattern of full-time employment for the two decades spanning 1982 -2001 reveals that the mid-to-late 80s experienced the highest employment prospects, while the recession in the early 90s coincided with a drop in the level of graduates in full-time employment. The most recent figures available represent a consolidation of employment prospects for graduates after a notable improvement between 1999 and 2000, and graduate prospects remained significantly higher than those of the general public. Dentistry and medicine continue to rank highest of all fields of study in terms of starting salaries; however when salaries are averaged over the number of hours worked per week, dentistry ranked first with medicine ranked eight. Of all fields of study, law experienced the greatest growth in starting salaries followed by engineering. In 2001 graduates worked an average of 41 hours per week, a figure which nevertheless ranged widely from 39 hours to 52 hours per week depending on field of study. Overall graduates earned $16.50 per hour, although this also varied considerably by field of study.
Gender Differences in Salaries Throughout the year 2001, both male and female graduates from Australian universities have found employment with higher salaries than other workers in their age group. The graph below shows that the difference between average graduate starting salaries and the earnings of those in the 20 – 24 year old age group in Australia was a little over A$5,000 in 2001. Graduates employed in New South Wales and Victoria recorded the highest starting salaries of all states and territories. Additionally, greater numbers of females are graduating from university than males, and this is also reflected in the numbers of survey respondents: in 1977 when the survey began, 37.3% of respondents were female, compared to 66.4% in 2001. However, discrepancies between male and female wages in the workforce are quite pronounced, and while male graduate starting salaries are lower than male average weekly earnings (AWE), the reverse is true for females. In 20001, male graduates earned almost A$5,000 less than the average weekly wage for males in Australia, whereas female graduates earned A$6,600 more on average than the female workforce as a whole, possibly due to factors such as career choices and family commitments. Additionally, female graduate salaries averaged 93.9% of male salaries. For more detailed information concerning the starting salaries and destinations of graduates from Australian universities, visit GradsOnline by clicking on the link at www.gradlink.edu.au .
*Indicates fewer than ten respondents
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