One in ten graduates to flee UK

One in ten students due to graduate university this summer do not plan on staying in the UK to find work, according to a new survey from graduate recruitment research firm High Fliers.

The survey revealed that out of the 15,000 students surveyed from over 30 universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and the London School of Economics, those looking for employment overseas has risen by a third from 7.8 per cent in 2024 to over ten per cent.

“This is probably the worst time in the last 30 years to be leaving university,” Martin Birchall, High Fliers founder said, adding:

“The prospects of landing a job this summer are the lowest they’ve been in all the years we’ve been doing this tracking.”

This comes amid the cost of the UK’s youth unemployment crisis reaching £125bn a year, with nearly a million young people who are out of education, employment or training – known as ‘Neets’, contributing to the rise.

According to Lancaster University’s Work Foundation, the number of NEETS has not been this high for 13 years.

However, the founder said this year’s cohort of students have been applying to more jobs than usual. getting in touch with a higher number of employers, and taking part in a high volume of employment-related activities.

“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 a record number of career activities, and more than ever before they started early. Over a half of respondents had started job hunting in their first year,” he said.

Of all the graduates surveyed, nearly 1.7m applications had been completed by February, which is over double the amount the 2023 cohort made.

As well as this, only 27 per cent of students surveyed said they had landed a job in the UK or elsewhere – a record low.

The only other time this figure was lower was in February 2021 during the pandemic when it fell to 23 per cent, but it generally sits at between 35 and 40 per cent.

The findings also suggest that the graduates are concerned about the onslaught of economic instability the UK is facing, lending to many opting to apply to overseas opportunities instead.

“You look at how graduate jobs have gone up and down since the nineties, and every time there’s a dip on the chart you can put a name on it. What we’ve seen now is three years of decline, but we can’t put a name on it,” Birchall said.

“We’re not in a recession, this isn’t a singular national crisis but confidence in business is low and it seems nobody wants to employ young people,” he added.