More graduates, some 61 per cent of the 2020-21 cohort, are in full time employment than at any point since 2017-18.
If you look at work more widely defined (employment in any mode and unpaid work) the figure is 82 per cent, bring in further study as a positive destination and we get to an impressive 90 per cent.
That’s the headline finding for the most recent release of HESA’s graduate outcomes dataset. The survey, conducted around 15 months after each cohort graduates, saw 355,050 responses for the 2020-21 cohort – a 43 per cent response rate (rising to 46 per cent if partial completions are included). The 2020-21 cohort completed their studies during the Covid-19 restrictions, with the final (and largest) group graduating in May 2021 just as these restrictions were beginning to be phased out. HESA’s reliably magnificent Lucy Van Essen-Fishman wrote an analysis of the impact of the pandemic on the data earlier this month.
There’s an abundance of data to play with. We learn, for instance, that male graduates are (still) more likely to be unemployed, whereas female graduates are more likely to be in part time employment. White graduates are more likely to be in full-time paid employment than any other ethnic group, whereas Black graduates are the most likely ethnic group to be in part-time employment. In England, graduates from a disadvantaged background (IMD quintile 1) are less likely to be in paid employment than their more advantaged peers. And disabled graduates are substantially less likely to be in paid employment than those without a disability.
