2008 looks set to be grim for graduates

Jan 02 2008 by Derek Torres Print This Article

Finishing university in the UK and looking to enter the job market? Perhaps you may just want to go back to bed if the answer to that question is 'yes'. According to the Daily Telegraph, things aren't looking so good for the fresh-out-of-school crowd in 2008!

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development recently published a report stating that 2008 will be the worst year for employment since Labour came to power – and we can remember how long ago that was!

The primary reason is simple: the private sector is hiring less and the public sector is slashing the number of jobs. Not an uplifting combination, is it?

In fact, it goes on to report that employment should rise by only 0.25% in the next year. This is bad news if you're already working and dreadful if you're looking to get your foot in the door.

But how bad is it in reality? The same institution published a report a month ago indicating that25% of recent graduates were either working in factories or in bars.

This is a far cry from where Labour intended to take the UK; while it's impossible to blame them entirely for it – there is such a thing as natural business and economic cycles – they are most certainly the ones who will be assigned blame if this condition goes on for much longer.

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Older Comments

As an employer of IT graduates this is not a picture I recognize. I have severe difficulties finding sufficient numbers of graduates to fill our graduate induction programme. The message may be that if you study subjects not in demand by employers, you will have difficulty in finding a job after graduation.

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