Graduate job market 'on the rise'

Technorati tags: graduate salaries,degrees,universities

This time around, a positive story about graduate jobs.

The Graduate Market survey of employers by High Fliers (I'd link to their web site, but it has been under construction for months) found an 11% rise in job vacancies, a whole swathe of employers looking to take more new graduates on this year, and average salaries of £23,000. Sounds great!

Alas, it is another very selective and misleading survey. High Fliers have interviewed a small range of very large 'blue chip', London-based companies, mainly in the financial sector, and which will account for less than 10% of total vacancies available. This is great news if you want to be an accountant, but if you want to be a scientist, or work in the media, or don't want to work in London, or fall into any one of a number of categories that make up the bulk of the graduate population, then this report does not mean a great deal to you.

What this kind of survey does do is gives graduates an unrealistic expectation of their potential starting salaries. These are the top-paying jobs that are likely to be available, by and large, in 2006. If you don't want to do these jobs, don't expect to get paid as much as this. And don't feel like a failure if you don't take one of these jobs. They're not the kind of job that anyone will thrive in. They're not even the kind of job that a lot of people who do take them will thrive in. They are often very stressful, long hour jobs, and other employers that pay less can provide other benefits that many consider worth the lower salary.