Prospects for graduate jobseekers improve for second year running

The proportion of graduates finding work when they leave university has gone up for the second year in a row.

A survey of 204,165 graduates from summer 2004 by the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) found that graduate unemployment stands at 6.1%, down 0.5% on last year.

The authors of the report, What Do Graduates Do?, said the graduate labour market was recovering from the dotcom collapse of the 1990s as well as a general slowdown in the jobs market.

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The students most likely to get a job were those who took architecture degrees, where there is a 3.3% rate of unemployment. Just behind them were those who had studied law and civil engineering.

Degrees offering the best immediate employment prospects for graduates are marketing (74% in jobs) media studies (71%) and civil engineering (71%).