Graduate jobs apocalypse: Opportunities tailor-made for university leavers crash to record low as Labour prices the young out of work
Labor has been accused of creating a ‘graduate jobs apocalypse’ after the number of tailored opportunities for university leavers fell to a record low.
The number of graduate positions fell by 45 per cent last year, employment website Adzuna said in a bleak report fueling fears that a ‘lost generation’ of young people will face a lifetime of out-of-work benefits.
The research found that fewer than 10,000 jobs for graduates were advertised last month, the first time Adzuna has fallen below that level since it started tracking the figures in 2016.
The report follows official figures last week showing youth unemployment rising to 16.1 per cent, the highest level in 11 years under Labour.
According to the Office for National Statistics, there are currently 739,000 young people aged 16 to 24 who want a job but cannot find one.
And overall unemployment is at a five-year high of 5.2 per cent, down from 4.1 per cent when Labor came to power.
Job opportunities for graduates have plummeted under Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves
Adzuna said job opportunities had contracted ‘sharply’ since the middle of last year, ‘reinforcing the difficult conditions faced by job seekers’ as businesses suspended hiring and turned to automation and artificial intelligence (AI).
Firms have been hit by higher costs under Labour, from Rachel Reeves’ £25bn national insurance tax raid to inflation-busting increases in the minimum wage and new employment rules.
Shadow Chancellor Sir Mel Stride said: ‘Labour is engineering a graduate employment apocalypse. By making it significantly more expensive and riskier to employ young people, they destroy opportunities at the very beginning of their working lives.
‘Devastating national insurance increases hit young workers hardest; The employment rights bill, fraught with new risks, will inevitably prevent companies from hiring graduates altogether.
‘The workforce has made it much more expensive to employ young people, reducing their chances of graduating.
‘This is what happens when a government that doesn’t understand business and economics gambles with the future of an entire generation.’
Labor leader Alan Milburn warned that too many young people were ‘stuck in a useful world’.
The former Cabinet minister, who led the government review of so-called NEET young people not in education, employment or training, said: ‘It’s almost a downward escalator for too many young people, their health is poor, their education is poor.’
Adzuna said the total number of jobs advertised last month was just 694,940, a 16 percent drop from the previous year and the first time the figure has fallen below 700,000 since the Covid-19 pandemic reached its depths in January 2021.
There are now 2.4 job seekers competing for every open position, with Adzuna warning of the ‘fiercest competition in years’.
Shazia Ejaz, campaign director at the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, said: ‘Government decisions have made it increasingly costly to give people work at a time when unemployment figures are rising.
‘If politicians want to avoid a labor market that accepts higher unemployment, they should stop developing policies that will increase it.’
The Chancellor’s pledge to equalize minimum wage rates between younger and older workers is being questioned amid warnings it is pricing people out of the market looking for work first.
The minimum wage for 18 to 20-year-olds rose from £8.60 to £10 per hour in April last year and is expected to rise to £10.85 in April.
Peter Dixon of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research said young workers were ‘priced out of the market’.
Andy King, former director of the Office Budget Liability described the crisis as ‘self-inflicted’.
Unemployment among 16-24 year olds has reached its highest level since the end of 2014 and has risen above the European Union average level for the first time this century.
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