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Graduate Careers Australia

ergo - Number 87 June 2002

The Graduate Labour Market in the UK and US

The United States

Each year, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) produces its Job Outlook report, the results of a survey conducted in September of the previous year which measures the volume of job offers being made by employers as well as monitoring trends in the levels of salaries offered to graduates. The report collates information provided by graduates, and for the 2001 – 2002 period a number of changes can be seen when compared to the preceding year, due to decreased performance in the US economy as a whole.

Some Strong Performers Fall
Prominent among these is the fact that accounting graduates were the only group within the business disciplines to actually see a rise (3.7%) in the average starting salaries offered to them, while the average salaries for traditional strong performers business administration graduates fell by 9.1%, and even highly-prized technical gurus from management information systems saw their offers decrease by 4.2%.

However, computer science students as a whole still command high salaries, with an average salary of US$51,429 (A$94,150) representing a drop of 0.3%; engineering graduates also saw little change throughout the past twelve months, and civil engineering graduates enjoyed a rise of 1.3%, to US$40,280 (A$73,744).

A Comparison of selected US starting salaries (in US$):

  1. Petroleum/Coal: $51,685
  2. Computer Science: $51,429
  3. Mechanical Engineering: $48,654
  4. Accounting: $40,293
  5. Civil Engineering: $40,280
  6. Economics/Finance: $40,047
  7. Business Administration: $35,209
  8. Rental/Lease Services: $29,737
  9. Liberal Arts: $28,667

Employers Proceed Cautiously
In general terms, the Job Outlook 2002 report reflects an overall slight downward trend, and despite talk of imminent economic recovery, employers are still proceeding cautiously; despite this students are optimistic and still pursuing jobs with longer term potential, according to NACE’s 2002 Graduating Student and Alumni Survey report, released in March 2002.

This report, although overwhelmingly based on female respondents (82.5%) represents a cross-section of age and ethnic background, and polls graduates‘ attitudes to education and finding work in the United States. Key findings included the ascendancy of careers centres as the most used source of information for job searching, with the internet and job advertisements also proving popular, while employment agencies and professional associations fared less well. The following list shows the preferences for respondents to the 2002 Graduating Student and Alumni Survey for different sources of information when looking for jobs, on a scale of 1 to 5:

  1. Careers Services – 3.67
  2. Friends – 3.0
  3. Faculty – 2.78
  4. Parents – 2.54
  5. Alumni – 2.32
  6. Relatives – 2.22

The most important criteria for choosing employers were rated as opportunity for advancement (at 42.3%), benefits packages (37.1%) and continuing education and training at 33.5%. The report also showed that employers could generally count on graduates with some related experience and with reasonable expectations concerning their work, and that there was currently less competition for candidates outside the technical fields.

Go to www.naceweb.org for further information on the American graduate labour market.

The United Kingdom

For the 2002 recruitment year, it is expected that vacancies will decrease overall by around 4.0% in the UK. While this will translate into uncertainty not only for graduate recruiters but for graduate job seekers themselves, it is unlikely to have the same net effect across all sectors. Vacancies in the areas of hospitality and public utilities are expected to climb throughout 2002 to the level of 20% and 18% respectively, while electrical engineering and telecommunications is expected to fall around 59%, according to the Association of Graduate Recruiters’ Graduate Salaries and Vacancies report released in early 2002.

The Association of Graduate Recruiters
The report is produced from a survey of 178 members of the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) in the United Kingdom, and apart from surveying the predicted recruitment patterns of its members, it also looks at the salary levels respondents are offering to new recruits. The results of this part of the survey in 2002 indicate that salaries are expected to at least grow with the rate of inflation, and that graduate salaries will grow at a higher rate than average earnings across the whole economy, with an approximate UKŁ20,000 (A$53,230) median salary level. This was reinforced by the Incomes Data Services survey, which suggested an average wage of UKŁ19,700 (A$52,425) and a decrease in graduate intake of around one percent from 2001.

The Graduate Salaries and Vacancies report also rated the relative importance of employability skills, with motivation, oral communication and initiative ranking among the most important, and the rankings applied without much variance across each sector.

AGR Chief Executive Carl Gilleard noted that, while employers obviously understood the cost implications of stopping graduate programs completely during more difficult economic periods and were maintaining their intake accordingly, nevertheless graduates need to be flexible about their job searching and clear about the value of various skills.

Find out more at www.agr.org.uk

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