UK Companies Expected to Increase Graduates Hiring by 18%

British businesses are planning a surge in the number of graduates they hire this year, in the latest signal of rising confidence and an improving UK economy.

Employers expect to hire 18% more graduates in 2014, up from the modest improvement of 4.3% in 2013 – with the finance sector planning to be the most aggressive recruiter as it increases intake by 42%.

The bullish projections are contained within the latest annual report into graduate pay and progression from employment researcher Incomes Data Services, and provide a long-awaited fillip for graduates who have been struggling in a brutally competitive market since the financial crisis. The report also revealed there were 60 applications for every vacancy in 2013, compared with 49 in 2011, while experts predict that many unemployed graduates will now be disadvantaged in the long term.

Nasreen Rahman, assistant editor at IDS, said: “Recruitment prospects for this year’s crop of graduates look brighter than they have for a long while as the number of job opportunities is set to rise sharply. Some sectors such as finance appear to be making up for lost time, aiming to recruit several times more graduates in 2014 than they did in 2013.”

The news follows similar research published at the end of last month by the jobs search engine Adzuna.co.uk, which claimed that graduate vacancies in May had soared by 37% year on year.

However, while recruitment may be picking up, the IDS research shows the increased activity has failed to translate into higher graduate starting salaries: 57% of employers froze graduate starting salaries again last year, continuing a trend from the start of the recession; 65% have not increased their rates for 2014.

via The Guardian

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