The jobs market for graduates is in a ‘white-collar recession’ and young people should consider manual work, according to the boss of one of the largest UK recruitment websites.
James Reed, chief executive of Reed, told Times Radio that his site advertised around 180,000 graduate jobs three or four years ago, and this is now down to 55,000.
He encouraged aspiring families to encourage their children to look into manual labour jobs as AI increasingly automated aspects of white-collar roles.
“The direction of travel is what worries me. Some people might say, well, that’s your business. But every other business is saying the same thing, that far fewer graduate opportunities are available to young people,” he said.
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Reed’s figures reflect similar findings this summer from jobs board Indeed, whose mid-market update concluded that graduate jobs were down 33% in absolute terms compared with last year.
And last week, research company High Fliers found that graduate hiring at the UK’s top 100 employers went down by 14.6% in 2024, the steepest annual fall since 2009.
Although there has been some positive news on the graduate employment front – Deloitte recently announced it would take on almost 1,500 graduates and apprentices – data increasingly shows that having a university degree does not guarantee success in the labour market.
Furthermore, pay for many graduate entry-level jobs can come close to minimum wage levels, particularly when new recruits often take on long hours in their first roles.
Reed added: “If you’re young and you have interest in doing things with your hands, I think that should be encouraged because a lot of jobs that involve doing things with your hands are still going to be available to young people. It’s the sort of service business-type jobs that are being hit hardest.
“It’s like a white-collar recession, rather like the blue-collar recession of the 1980s. I recognise the same pattern in a way, when a lot of jobs are being hollowed out by automation. I’m thinking about factories [before] and offices now.”
He said that there was “a big cohort of middle-class people” who needed to challenge their assumptions about their children going into “big lawyers or accountants” and encourage them to think about jobs in sectors such as hospitality.
“They should think again, certainly for their children’s benefit, because those are going to be the jobs of the future,” he said.
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