Jobs crucial to keeping graduates in Yorkshire says report

Finding employment is the key factor in persuading graduates to remain in Yorkshire, an innovative new report has revealed.

The research, carried out by the Regional Graduate Employment Training Group (RGETG) as part of the Yorkshire Forward-funded GraduatesYorkshire initiative, also discovered that graduates were more positive about the region than negative, with the cost of living, proximity to the countryside, friendliness of local people and high quality leisure facilities the principal reasons for their optimism.

The findings were reached after the RGETG, trialling a new web-based methodology, tracked the fledgling careers of more than 700 of the region’s graduates from the year 2000 through to 2003.

More than half of respondents perceived the Yorkshire Graduate Labour Market to have few graduate level jobs at the time of their graduation in 2000. A third of the respondents thought that Yorkshire offered a similar availability of graduate jobs to other regions, while another third thought that Yorkshire offered fewer graduate jobs than other regions. Only 5% felt that there were more graduate level jobs in Yorkshire than other regions.

The majority (65%) stayed in the Yorkshire region for six or more months after graduation, while 35% left within six months of graduation. The main reasons for staying in Yorkshire were that respondents had a job, secondly they had friends who were still here and thirdly, they liked the region. The main reasons for leaving were firstly getting a job elsewhere, secondly moving back home to live with their parents and thirdly that the respondents perceived that there were no jobs in Yorkshire.

The majority of respondents were in employment in 2001 and with an increased number in 2003. In 2001 - almost half (48%) of the whole sample were working in Yorkshire against 29% elsewhere in England. By 2003 this had dropped slightly to 46%, compared to 40% of respondents working elsewhere in England.

The proportion of those in employment three years after graduating who stated that their degree was relevant to their work in some way was 89%, compared with only 75% six months after graduation.

The mean overall salary for UK workers within this sample in 2001 was 15,150, with the mean salary for Yorkshire jobs at 14,700. The overall mean salary in 2003 had risen across all regions, standing at 21,955 for UK workers and 20,859 for those in Yorkshire.

Commenting on the results, Helen Thomson, Yorkshire Forward’s Head of Inclusion and Skills, said:

This survey has produced some very interesting findings on how graduate careers in Yorkshire have developed over recent years. It is particularly pleasing that the majority of respondents were positive about their lives in the region. However, it is an understandable concern that finding a good job was the key to persuading them to remain. This is a challenge for all of us directly involved in creating employment opportunities in Yorkshire and Humber, especially Yorkshire Forward.

GraduatesYorkshire is a joint initiative of Yorkshire Forward and the Yorkshire Higher Education Institutions.

Nalayini Thambar, GraduatesYorkshire Project Manager at Yorkshire Universities, said:

We are pleased that the first survey of this kind has produced some useful and interesting results. Many of the issues raised regarding the reality and perception of graduate employment opportunities in the region are being addressed by the university careers services through the delivery of GraduatesYorkshire. We are currently working on a survey of graduates from the year 2001 to develop further our understanding of these issues.