Graduate Labour Market Research Articles

‘You have to work ten times harder’: first-in-family students, employability and capital development

ABSTRACT Since the 1990s, UK government policy has sought to increase access to higher education, with a plan to improve social mobility. However, enhancing the employability prospects for all has proven difficult to achieve through widening participation alone. This research explores this paradox, via the experiences of first-in-family undergraduates as they prepare to enter the UK graduate labour market. The concept of capital development is applied to understand the structural disadvantages experienced by students who lack a familial university background. Twenty-five interviews with first-in-family students at a Russell Group university in the UK were analysed thematically, with the application of the Graduate Capital Model. Findings reveal the high value attached by these students to human capital and the barriers they face in accruing social and cultural capital. This research illustrates how students who lack such capital face numerous obstacles in developing the strong career identities necessary to transition to graduate employment. Whilst the Graduate Capital Model gives valuable insight into the experiences of these students, the role of economic capital in shaping prospects is also recognised. Recommendations are proposed as to how universities, careers services and employers might act in support of first-in-family students’ graduate transitions.

Degrees of demand: a task-based analysis of the British graduate labour market

Abstract This study investigates the evolving demand for graduate skills in the British workforce, leveraging a task-based approach with data from the Skills and Employment Survey Series. Focused on the changing importance of job tasks related to graduate skills, the research explores the mapping of these tasks to educational attainment, discerns the price employers pay for tasks requiring graduate skills, and addresses regional variation in graduate supply and demand. Despite a slowing growth of graduate skills requirements post-2006, we find a stable assignment of graduate education with job tasks and an overall flat task price related to graduate skills requirements. We present regional evidence showing education expansion rather than exogenous factors drove high-skills demand, balancing the development of supply and demand in the British graduate labour market over 1997–2017.

All good things come in threes – required skill sets in the graduate labour market in Germany

PurposeOur work adds to the debate regarding higher education graduates’ skills required in the labour market in Germany and beyond.Design/methodology/approachUsing Q-methodology and the accompanying narrations, we explore German employers’ and employees’ views (N = 26) on characteristics required at the entry level.FindingsOur findings show three areas of the labour market with different skill requirements. Whereas the first area, “The world of rules”, applies more likely to the professions and academia, the two other areas, “The middle field” and “The people-oriented and critical market”, can be found throughout the labour market. The disciplinary affiliation does not play a role. In all three areas, soft skills are crucial and specialised knowledge is only highly valued in the area of “The world of rules”.Originality/valueIn contrast to previous findings, we do not focus on singular skills. Instead, we focus on skill sets and discuss their relevance from the background of their usability.

대졸 청년층의 성공적 노동시장 진입 영향요인 분석

Objectives The purpose of this study is to analyze the factors influencing the employment outcomes that indicate successful entry into the labor market for college graduates. By doing so, the study aims to derive policy implications for future higher education.
 Methods To achieve this, data from the 5th to 12th surveys of the Korean Education Longitudinal Study 2005 (KELS 2005) were utilized, tracing the experiences of students from the 1st year of middle school in 2005 until 6 years after university graduation. The Korean Education Longitudinal Study investigates intellectual and moral growth, development, and educational experiences of students from middle school entry through high school graduation, tracking them up to the age of 28, including their initial career acquisition processes, graduate school enrollment, and more. The dependent variable in this study is the employment status of participants collected in the 12th survey. Logistic regression analysis was applied to identify the independent variables influencing this dependent variable.
 Results The analysis revealed that, except for gender, personal characteristics of students had no significant impact on employment prospects. Factors such as passion for education, academic achievement in the middle school stage, type of university attended, metropolitan area university enrollment, major GPA, and collaborative skills were identified as positively influencing the likelihood of employment.
 Conclusions The findings of this study highlight that the desire for education and academic achievement during the middle school stage, as well as the type of university attended, metropolitan area university enrollment, major GPA, and collaborative skills during the higher education stage, contribute to the increased likelihood of successful entry into the labor market for the young population who have completed higher education.

Maintaining the gap: women’s early career experiences of entry into the UK graduate labour market

ABSTRACT Gender inequality in the workplace remains a persistent issue that impacts upon women from their first point of entry into the labour market. In this paper, we explore the experiences, of 20 women in the UK as they take their initial steps onto the career ladder upon graduation. Adopting an interpretive methodology that uses a Bourdieusian framework based on habitus, capital, and field, we highlight that women continue to face structural and individual barriers that influence, and in many cases limit, available career opportunities. By intersecting gender with social class and ethnicity, intra-gender differences are identified that demonstrate the deep-seated nature of disadvantage faced by working class and ethnic minority female graduates in securing employment in comparison to their white, middle-class peers. We conclude by recommending that careers support and guidance should be introduced earlier in the education system to raise aspirations and challenge the perpetuation of gender inequality.

Designing in students’ training in the field of law

According to the Ministry of Labor and Social Protection of the Russian Federation, there is an opinion among leading employers that only 8 % of professional educational organizations graduates are fully prepared to perform their job duties. Modern economy, especially in the stage of import substitution and sanctions, requires a strong and highly qualified competitive employee. Modern vocational education has special requirements, it needs transformation. Professional competencies of modern graduates continue to be the center of attention. Continuous development of techniques and technologies requires mobility, flexibility, and timely actualization from professional education. The study analyzes experience of Law project training of students as a way to increase the demand for law graduates in labor market. The analysis has been conducted on legal specialists training.

Wage Returns to Field of Study-Occupation Mismatch in Turkish Graduate Labor Market: Quantile Regression Approach

In this paper we estimate the income effects of horizontal mismatch and its interaction with fields of study for Turkish higher education graduates using Turkish Labor Force Survey dataset. After controlling the vertical mismatch to reduce potential bias, our baseline findings show that one point (decrease) increase in (mis)matching index leads to 21.9% wage (penalty) growth. However, the return to the matching varies significantly between fields of study. We also explore extent to which impact of horizontal mismatch is sensitive to the ability levels represented by conditional quantile of the income distribution of graduates. Our quantile regression estimations point us heterogenous matching returns for different quantiles of fields of study. While positive wage effect of matching is significantly valid at the above and below the median income in six and three majors respectively, three majors’ negative matching is at above the median income.

Competencias profesionales en la carrera Mecánica Automotriz , respuesta a las demandas del mercado laboral

In this work, the generic and specific skills required by the labor market for graduates in Automotive Mechanics are determined. It was framed in a quantitative research, the study was of a propositional descriptive type, it included a non-experimental, transectional design. A survey has been carried out in which the following results were found: 60% of academics consider it important that graduates demonstrate theoretical-practical knowledge in automotive mechanics. Furthermore, 80% of them believe that professional performance should be in line with technological advances in the field. 100% of academics also emphasize the importance of continuing training programs. In response to these findings, the “Diploma in modern technologies in gasoline and diesel engines in automobiles” has been designed in a blended format, aimed at practicing professionals.

Conceptualising prospective first-generation entrants’ higher education decision-making as an ‘ecology of intersecting influences’ and an ‘elastic plane’

ABSTRACT This paper draws on research conducted in four publicly funded secondary schools in the South-East of England that explored the higher education decision-making of prospective first-generation university entrants accessing school-based widening participation interventions. It begins by introducing an ‘ecology of intersecting influences’ approach that opens up the multifactorial and uncertain nature of decision-making. Interviews with staff and focus groups with young people (aged between 13 and 18) highlighted the incremental and inter-dependent nature of higher education decision-making but also the importance of attending more closely to the diversely constituted, non-linear intersections between its situated, structural, material, temporal and relational dimensions. In the English context, these include a highly socially stratified university sector and graduate labour market plus significantly increased personal costs, all of which make it harder to calculate the individual ‘worth’ of a university degree. The paper concludes that when higher education decision-making is conceptualised as both an ‘ecology of intersecting influences’ and an ‘elastic plane’, this better captures how opportunities and constraints differently play out in the decision-making of prospective first-generation entrants over time, avoiding the imposition of normative, homogenising and limiting assumptions about the difference made by different family/social positionings.

Scarring effects for young people in challenging economic times: a conceptual synthesis and future policy and research agenda

ABSTRACT A renewed conceptual framework of labour market scarring is developed. Due to economic shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic, labour market scarring presents an important policy problem. The paper first outlines the theoretical mainstream view on scarring and argues that existing theoretical frame works on labour market scarring are not sufficient to understand the post-COVID labour market for graduates. We identify three areas in which mainstream understanding overlooks and discusses their explanatory value in understanding contextual mediatory factors and non-economic effects of initial scarring. A case is made for qualitative research and career development approaches to understand the processes of scarring as these provide further insight into its socio-psychological manifestations and consequences.

#GirlBossing the university side hustle: Entrepreneurial femininities, postfeminism and the veneer of ‘female success’ in times of crisis

Against a backdrop of the growing crisis in higher education, the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic and a longer-term precaritisation of the youth and graduate labour market, the last 2 years have witnessed an increased visibility and promotion of flexible, entrepreneurial and often digitally mediated forms of self-employment addressed at young women, including the ‘side hustle’. With media declarations such as ‘the university side hustle has come of age’, universities themselves have begun embedding initiatives that seemingly help students launch a ‘student side hustle’ as they turn passions into entrepreneurial projects. The student side hustle has been advocated as a feasible way of not only supplementing income while studying but also investing in one’s future employability in the context of increasingly uncertain graduate outcomes. In this article we connect the emergence of the student side hustle to a broader postfeminist landscape in which (young) women are invited to engage in entrepreneurial self-employment through the promise of ‘passionate work’, financial autonomy and time-freedom. We demonstrate that in the context of higher education, where women outnumber men and dominate the degree subjects increasingly badged as ‘low value’ due to declining graduate outcomes, institutional incitements to engage in the student side hustle are distinctly gendered. Crucially, we contend that this framing and promotion of the student side hustle – in which women become the ‘poster girls’ of entrepreneurialism – works to facilitate and sustain the myths and ideals of postfeminist success while masking the ongoing crises and gendered inequalities that underpin contemporary higher education and the graduate labour market.

Labour Market Outcomes of Graduates in Economics in Australia*

The discipline of economics encompasses broad skillsets with diverse applications in employment markets and industries. Studies of labour market prospects for economics graduates are relatively dated particularly in the light of developments such as declining interest in economics in high school and university. This study examines the labour market outcomes of Australian economics graduates, at the bachelor and postgraduate levels, using a national dataset. We observe strong employment prospects for graduates in economics after graduation, in terms of full‐time employment and salaries. Obtaining a postgraduate qualification appears to pay off, with master's and PhD graduates experiencing more favourable employment outcomes than bachelor's graduates. Substantial proportions report being overqualified for their jobs although this proportion is comparable to those reported for the broader Australian graduate labour market. Reassuringly, those initially overqualified transition out and overqualification reduces in the longer term. Most economics graduates become economists, but many others enter a wide array of other occupations. Of those who start out in non‐economist professions, there is a 42 per cent chance that they transition to economist roles after 2.5 years. In summary, an economics degree leads to favourable employment and earnings and should still be considered an attractive choice for prospective students.

Perceptions of Employability of Undergraduate Business Program Graduates: A Qualitative Analysis

Background: Students' perspective on graduate employability is an essential aspect to consider as they are the primary stakeholders of higher education institutions. Therefore, exploring graduates' perspectives on their employability and considering their opinions when designing policies and programs to improve graduate employability is crucial. However, little attention has been paid to graduates' perspectives on their employability. Objectives: This paper explored graduates' perceptions of employability, the labour market, and their views on academic credentials and employability skills in obtaining and retaining employment. The paper also examined the role of business schools in enhancing employability and how universities have prepared graduates to enter the labour market in the context of the human capital approach. Methods: The study adopted a qualitative approach using semi-structured interviews with a small sample of 38 undergraduate students from two different business programs who graduated from the constituent college of Pokhara university in 2019 and 2021 using purposive sampling. The interviews were designed to elicit in-depth responses from the participants and to allow them to share their experiences and insights. The study used the thematic analysis approach to analyze the data, which involved identifying patterns and themes within the data. The transcripts of the interviews were carefully reviewed and analyzed, and themes were generated based on the recurring patterns and ideas expressed by the participants. Results: The thematic analysis demonstrated that graduates understood employability as becoming employable with the potential of employability skills. Graduates viewed possessing academic credentials as one of the key benefits ofbecoming employable in the competitive and congested graduate labour market. The study further illustrated that employers expect both discipline-specific knowledge and soft skills from graduates. The data on the role of business schools in enhancing employability suggested that although many graduates felt that business schools could provide theoretical knowledge, the schools need to pay more attention to practical-based knowledge, especially soft skills. Conclusion: The study findings have provided insights into how recent graduates comprehend employability, view the current labour market and position their academic credentials in employability. The analysis has further demonstrated that students increasingly view their employability as the relative positional competition for labour market resources, which appears to have a bearing on how they perceive the role of credentials in their employability. The findings have further shown that employers expect both sides of graduate potential: strong academic credentials and employability skills. Therefore, graduates increasingly see the need to develop broader employability, which incorporates building strong academic credentials and employability skills and competencies outside the formal learning context. The study findings have implications for business schools, policymakers and researchers within the broader discourse of the knowledge-driven economy.

Getting a head start: capital inheritance and the labour market entry of Finnish business graduates

Previous studies have associated participation in higher education with the formation of middle-class advantages. Studies have shown that graduates from affluent family backgrounds gain more advantages from graduate degrees and secure better job opportunities than their less privileged counterparts. Drawing on the Bourdieusian framework, this study uses qualitative interview data (n = 29) to examine how recent business graduates mobilise economic, cultural and social capital for their entry into the Finnish labour market. The context of the Finnish welfare society brings novel insights to research on the inheritance of different forms of capital. Our findings reveal that although middle-class students do have a head start in entry to the graduate labour market, the Finnish society and higher education system even out social inequalities in graduate employment as working-class students may utilise institutional resources, socialise with peers and accumulate work experience to cross structural and dispositional barriers.

Transnational education, labor market outcomes and graduate employability: a scoping review

PurposeThis scoping review aims to survey literature that covers employability preparation and labor market outcomes for graduates from transnational higher education institutions.Design/methodology/approachThis scoping literature review uses career ecosystems as a theoretical framework and the context-input-process-outcomes model as a conceptual framework.FindingsThis scoping review confirms a limited research base of approximately 50 sources that primarily use qualitative methods and socio-economic theories to center the student voice and focus on international branch campuses in the Middle East and Asia. Notably, there is a lack of focus on staff experiences regarding the process of preparing students for employment. The review also demonstrates the need for more research on career processes and outcomes in transnational higher education.Research limitations/implicationsThis scoping review is relevant to higher education institutions seeking to meet the challenges of preparing graduates for more than one national labor market. It has implications for universities' ability to attract students, develop relevant labor market preparation programming and understand whether the institution is addressing local employment needs. For researchers, it offers insight and impetus into the area of inquiry regarding transnational education, graduate labor market outcomes and employability.Practical implicationsPractical implications are drawn for students, parents, policymakers and transnational and non-transnational higher education institutions, as well as those who are engaged in providing international education and career advice.Social implicationsThis review offers insight into developing labor market-relevant TNE programming, which may be helpful both for host and home country transnational education stakeholders interested in impact.Originality/valueThis is one of the first reviews to systematically address literature about employability preparation and labor market outcomes for graduates from transnational higher education institutions; in using career ecosystems theory, this review offers a bridge between international higher education and career studies.

Making Markets Material: Enactments, Resistances, and Erasures of Materiality in the Graduate Labour Market

Scholarship on the graduate labour market, preoccupied by structure, agency, and power, has largely focused on the market’s discursive composition. It has not yet paid significant attention to the concrete, material apparatus of the market and how this shapes market outcomes. In contrast, we approach the construction of the graduate labour market from a new materialist perspective and with reference to the growing literature of ‘market studies’. We consider the empirical case of a graduate recruitment hackathon to show how the hackathon’s material features were implicated in enacting a specific occurrence of the graduate labour market. The agendas of the hackathon’s designers and their visions of the graduate labour market were enacted in the hackathon’s material arrangements, but this enactment was not always reliable: in some instances materiality resisted and erased corporate agendas. Our article contributes to the sociology of work by highlighting the dynamic relationship between materiality and power (re)production in the graduate labour market.

Stepping stones or trapdoors? Paid and unpaid graduate internships in the creative sector

Policy discourse on graduate internships rests on the assumption that, paid or unpaid, they improve the employability of interns. Employing data from a survey of UK creative and mass communications graduates, surveyed two to six years after graduation, this article examines the impact of graduate internships on subsequent job prospects. While paid internships are associated with better pay and increased chances of having a creative or graduate-level job, unpaid internships are not, and are associated with lower pay in the short to medium term. Findings contribute to theory by challenging the ‘stepping stone’ view of unpaid internships and much policy discussion about these. Results reinforce, with enhanced specificity about the role internships play in the graduate labour market, theories that characterise the graduate labour market as a ‘positional’ hierarchy of opportunities rather than a labour market that is essentially meritocratic in nature.

A visit to another class? Working-class graduates entering university and the graduate labour market in Finland

ABSTRACT Working-class students often face more challenges in securing graduate-level jobs than their middle-class peers. This paper applies the concept of boundary crossing in studying the experience of Finnish business graduates from a working-class background (n = 27) and asks what types of boundaries they have faced and how they have managed them on their pathway through and after university studies. We identify three major boundaries: getting the actual study place, learning to be a student in university and graduating and getting a job in the graduate labour market. Our findings indicate that successful transitions are possible, as the Finnish higher education system enables them in many ways. However, successful boundary work demands socialising to the norms and values of the new social field as well as renewed relationships with one’s social background. This paper discusses the implications of these findings for the development of inclusive policies and practices.

Stress tolerance and features of student self-regulation during the pandemic period

The coronavirus disease pandemic (COVID-19) of 2019 is a public health emergency all over the world, and in particular in our republic. This problem also poses serious questions in the context of psychological health. One of the problems is self-isolation, accompanied by intensive inclusion in the digital information environment, which has led to a deterioration in the psychological well-being of students and the emergence of stress. This article deals with the problem of a low level of stress tolerance of students during the post-COVIDtraining regime.During the coronavirus pandemic, measures were introduced around the world to stabilize the social, economic, and political spheres of life. Nevertheless, the pandemic has harmed both the way people live and their affective states. In this regard, the problem of increasing the stress resistance of students at the present stage is of particular importance.As the COVID-19 pandemic strengthens around the world, all areas of life, including daily activities, education, and economic and social sectors, have experienced significant downturns. While all subpopulations are affected by COVID-19, students are particularly vulnerable given their transition to emerging adulthood surrounded by broad future opportunities. Students are bearing a disproportionate burden ofpsychosocial illness, according to growing evidence, which can be attributed to the uncertainty surrounding the course of the pandemic and the sudden shift to online education. Stress becomes an integral part of student life and leads to violations of behavioral, emotional, cognitive, and motivational areas of activity. In addition, many businesses have reduced their recruitment efforts, leaving limited employment for students and more competition in the graduate labor market. The coronavirus infection hasforced people to stay in their homes for several months, and this is a very difficult task.

An unjust balance: a systematic review of the employability perceptions of UK undergraduates from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds

ABSTRACT A systematic review of qualitative primary data (2010–2021) was undertaken to understand how inequality is experienced by undergraduate students from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds transitioning to the UK labour market. A ten-step protocol for qualitative synthesis was adapted to guide the study, whilst the PRISMA flow diagram was used to report the search. Data was extracted from 14 papers with thematic synthesis used to analyse the results inductively. This review illustrates multiple barriers faced by disadvantaged socio-economic students in a competitive graduate labour market and the severe impact this may have on student career development. Disadvantaged students often apply more effort than advantaged counterparts in seeking work and internship opportunities and live more precariously, as they lack finance to buffer them. In contrast, advantaged socio-economic status students can act quickly to build their employability profiles from the beginning of their degree studies, with the strategic application of social, cultural and economic capital. The qualitative papers in this review complement previous quantitative research, illustrating that despite participation rates in high education increasing for disadvantaged students, their career outcomes have not generally improved relative to their more advantaged peers. The review includes recommendations for stakeholders including government, universities, careers services and employers.