University Graduates Struggling To Find Full-Time Work

Australian university graduates are struggling to find full-time employment, a new study finds.

Research by the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University shows that between 2008 and 2014, the rate of university graduates in full-time employment fell from 89 per cent to 67 per cent.

The drop had been pretty uniform across most degrees, but some fields are doing better than others.

In 2008, 97.5 per cent of graduates from medicine had a full-time job. That figure only dropped to 95 per cent in 2014.

Tom Karmel, Adjunct Professor, said students yet to complete their studies will face difficulties trying to find work as the number of available jobs shrink against a growing number of university graduates.

"There certainly has been a huge increase in the supply, but what you would expect over time is for the labour market demand side of things to adjust, and that hasn't happened sufficiently over that period of time," he said.

The issue has been chalked up to an over-supply of graduates. Despite a 20 per cent drop in university graduates finding full-time work, the number of students commencing study jumped from 20,000 to more than 27,000.

"There's been no doubt that universities have been very keen to expand their enrolments," Dr. Karmel said.

"There's a clear financial incentive to do so but I think they're going to be under more and more scrutiny in terms of the outcomes for the graduates."

While this may all seem totally and utterly gloomy, other experts suggest that we shouldn't be stressing out too much.

Chief executive of Universities Australia, Belinda Robinson, has rejected claims that there's an over-supply of university graduates. She said, "on the whole, the labour market has absorbed the very substantial increased numbers of graduates with very little difficulty over the past 30 to 40 years," adding that unemployment rates for graduates still remain well below other groups.

Given the current trends, however, others think it's ripe time for us to consider other alternatives to university.

Andrew Norton, the Grattan Institute's higher education program director said, "we all need to think carefully about whether some of the students who are at university would be better off doing a vocational diploma or certificate III or IV course."

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