Graduate labour market update: manufacturing skills and Graduate Outcomes

Charlie Ball explores the latest Graduate Outcomes data, more from the Census on the age, sex and disability profiles of different occupations, and an extensive report on skills in manufacturing

The new annual Graduate Outcomes data from HESA was released on 31 May, looking at the outcomes of 2020/21 graduates 15 months after graduating.

82% of graduates from that academic year were in employment, unpaid work, or a mixture of work and study 15 months after graduation. 61% were in full-time employment compared to 57% of 2019/20 graduates. 4% of UK domicile graduates and 8% of non-UK domicile were unemployed.

We won't go into a great deal of detail here, as we will be doing plenty with this dataset in the coming months, but at this point worth mentioning that the figures here are good and describe a strong graduate labour market - although, as always, an examination of the detail will pick up important nuances in time.

Prospects Luminate's Early Careers Survey 2023 surveyed 4,483 Prospects users on the challenges they face:

• 52% of respondents said 'Money' was the biggest challenge of the last year, followed by 'Balancing commitments' (51%), 'Taking care of my mental health' (50%), and 'Keeping motivated' (48%).
• Engagement with careers provision has fallen, with 51% of school pupils, 57% of college students and 44% of university students surveyed saying that they had attended a careers advice session in 2022.
• 24% of this year's respondents indicated that finding work experience was one of their biggest challenges, compared with 56% a year ago. 75% had had some kind of work experience in 2022.
• Part-time and full-time work were the two most common forms of work experience, followed by volunteering and internships/work placements. 15% said they had done an internship or work placement (5% as part of their course). In total 24% of university finalists said that they have done an internship or work placement.
• When asked how certain they are about their career plans, 60% of respondents indicated that they are 'fairly' (41%) or 'very' (19%) certain about them. However, 48% of those just starting out in their careers were more likely to express feelings of uncertainty than the wider group, and much more likely to say this than respondents who were more established in their careers (17%).
• Similarly, undergraduate students (40%) were significantly more likely to say that they were feeling uncertain about their career plans than postgraduates (28%), with finalists (44%) being slightly more likely to admit this than the undergraduate group as a whole.
• 26% of respondents who said that they were currently in employment planned to leave their employer this year, with 34% of those who graduated in 2022 saying the same. When asked why, 36% said they would do so to advance their careers and 17% said that they wanted a higher salary.
• Half of respondents said that they had changed their career plans since January 2022, with two fifths putting this change in career plans down to the cost of living crisis. 39% of university students surveyed said that their career plans had changed in that time, compared with 51% of school students and 45% of college students.
• 47% said they planned to get a job, internship/placement, degree apprenticeship or apprenticeship/ training scheme as the next step in their career. Many of these individuals had been actively seeking employment in the last 12 months (79%). A significant proportion indicated that they felt prepared for their next step (66%), which is an increase on last year's figure of 59%.
• For 2022 graduates, the top three priorities in job choice were training and development, career progression and work/life balance. Women were slightly more likely to say that work/life balance was fairly or very important to them (97%), compared to men (94%).
• 51% of the employed said that they were either hybrid (38%) or remote (13%) working, with those who were more established in their careers (66%) being more likely to report this than those who were just starting out (48%).
• 39% of those with an A or AS-level were working hybrid or remote compared to 47% of those with an undergraduate degree and 66% with a postgraduate degree.

The total number of online job adverts increased slightly on 2 June 2023 compared with the previous week. There were increases in 16 of the 28 online job categories, decreases in seven, and five remained unchanged in the latest week. The 'charity or voluntary' category saw the largest week-on-week increase, rising by 32%, while the 'legal' category fell the most, decreasing by 8%.

The total number of online job adverts was 12% lower than the level seen in the equivalent period of 2022, with 22 of the 28 online job categories below their levels of a year ago. The level remains 16% higher than pre-pandemic levels.

The most recent data on attitudes and social trends shows that 40% of the workforce were working in a hybrid way in late May. Meanwhile:

• 29% of working adults reported that they would describe any part of their job as a 'green job', based on the definition of 'a job that helps to protect or contribute towards the environment, such as helping to combat climate change or improve the natural environment'.
• 4% of working adults reported that all or most of their job relates to 'green' activities.
• 15% of working adults reported that they work for an organisation that does specific green activities, but their own work was not directly related.

There were more interesting cuts of data from the Census this week. The first looks at the age, sex and disability breakdown of occupations:

• 1.1 million people said that they were sales and retail assistants, making it the most frequently reported job.
• 76% of bed-and-breakfast owners were aged over 50 years old, compared with around a third of the workforce in this age group overall. Half of heavy goods vehicle (HGV) drivers are also aged 50 years or older.
• 42% of farmers are aged 60 years or older and 29% aged 65 years or older. However, farm workers, who may do more of the physical labour, are counted separately. People who do this job are often young, 23% were aged under 25 years.
• 60% of people in the occupation 'typists and other keyboard professions' were aged 50 years or older. However, data entry jobs, which also require routine keyboard work, were mostly held by younger people, with 41% aged under 35 years. This is relatively high compared with 33% of people in that age group across the whole workforce. Only 18% of typists were aged under 35 years.
• Around half of people employed as a data analyst were aged under 35 years old, with a similar picture for 'actuaries, economists and statisticians', and 'business and related research professionals'.
• However, related occupations such as 'arts officers, producers and directors' and 'authors and writers' had a more mid-career profile, perhaps reflecting the amount of experience required for such roles, with the largest representation between those aged 30 and 49 years. Occupations in IT, programming, web design and 'graphic and multimedia design' also had a larger proportion of people aged 30 to 49 years.
• Some skilled manufacturing trades had an older age profile, with nearly half of workers aged 50 years or older. These include upholsterers (49%), footwear and leather working trades (47%), and 'glass and ceramic makers, decorators and finishers' (47%).
• However, carpenters and joiners, stonemasons, butchers, those working in metal working, welding, and plastic process operatives were among the occupations that had a range of ages matching the whole population.
• Construction workers and people working in many manual trades were nearly all men. 99% of bricklayers and 98% of vehicle mechanics were men, while women were overwhelmingly represented in early education and childcare, as well as the education sector. Around 97% of early education and childcare assistants and practitioners were women.
• In general, most teachers were female, except among higher education professionals, such as university lecturers, which were more evenly split (48% women compared with 52% men). This matches the proportion across the whole workforce of 48% women and 52% men.
• 76% of people working in 'science, research, engineering and technology' occupations were men. There were more men who were physical scientists (73% men, 27% women), but this difference was less apparent for chemical scientists (62% men, 38% women) and biological scientists (56% men, 44% women).
• There were more female biochemists and biomedical scientists (63% women, 38% men), and also slightly more women who were social and humanities scientists (53% women, 47% men).
• Almost half of female engineers were aged under 35 years (48%). For men who were working as engineers, around a third were aged under 35 years, similar to the whole working population.
• This means that among engineers aged 50 to 54 years, there were around ten men for every woman. However, among younger people aged 25 to 29 years old, this difference had roughly halved to five men working as engineers, for every one woman.
• Healthcare professions typically had more women than men. Occupations involving therapy, psychology, and nursing were mostly held by women, but there was a more even mix of men and women among general practitioners (GPs), specialist doctors, paramedics and dentists.
• The youngest workers, those aged 16 to 24 years, make up 10% of the total workforce, but they made up around half of the workers in some hospitality roles, including waiters and waitresses (50%), bar staff (48%), and coffee shop workers (48%).
• Retail was the largest type of employment reported in census data, (4% of people working), at 1.1 million people. Young people aged 16 to 24 account for one in every eight people working in retail (13%). People aged 25 to 29 account for another 12%.
• Many of the top ten jobs for this age group are lower paid, many are part-time roles, and some are seasonal.
• Census data show around one in ten workers had a disability (9.6%). For care escorts, this more than doubled to 21%. This is followed by elected officials and typists and related keyboard occupations, library clerks and assistants, and artists, among whom around 19% of workers were disabled.
• The top ten most common jobs for people aged 55 to 59 years old were also often lower paid roles, such as street cleaners and other 'elementary cleaning occupations'.

There is also a tool to examine how many people do your job in the UK (using SOC, of course). To save a certain amount of effort on behalf of readers, 17,325 people were counted on the census as 'careers advisers and vocational guidance specialists' in England and Wales in March 2021.

The largest age group of people who had this job were those aged 50 to 54 years. Of the whole working population 11.7% were aged 50 to 54 years. For people working as careers advisers and vocational guidance specialists, 13.2% were in this age group.

Other jobs that had a similar age profile to careers advisers and vocational guidance specialists included:

• other drivers and transport operatives
• credit controllers
• fork-lift truck drivers

(This answers the question 'how is being a careers professional like driving a fork-lift?')

Among people working as careers advisers and vocational guidance specialists there were more women than men (75.8% compared with 24.2%). Of people working as careers advisers and vocational guidance specialists, 13.4% were disabled. This means people said they had a long-term condition that limited them 'a little' or 'a lot' in their day-to-day activities. The average for all occupations is 9.6%. Disability is more common among people who are older. This occupation had a similar age profile compared with the whole working population.

People with this job were more likely to work full-time than part-time (68.3% compared with 31.7%). They are also more likely to be an employee (92.2%) than self-employed (7.8%).

The region of England and Wales with the highest percentage of people with this job was the South East. At a local level, the areas with the highest percentage of people in this occupation included Birmingham.

Elsewhere, Irish Census data has also been released - we'll look at the graduate data later when it is released.

The Recruitment & Employment Confederation's (REC) most recent Report on Jobs suggests a hiring slowdown is leading to an increased supply of candidates to employers:

• Permanent staff appointments fell for the eighth month in a row and at the quickest rate since January 2021. Temp billings meanwhile expanded at the softest pace since last October and only slightly.
• The higher cost of living and shortages of skilled candidates meanwhile drove sustained increases in starting pay for both permanent and temporary staff. However, rates of pay growth softened since April amid a further improvement in overall candidate numbers. Aggregate staff supply expanded at the quickest rate since December 2020, which was often attributed to redundancies.
• Temp billings rose sharply in London and the South of England, but declined in the North of England and the Midlands.
• Growth of demand for staff was sustained across both the private and public sectors during May. However, rates of expansion moderated across the board compared to April. The strongest rise in vacancies was signalled for temporary positions in the public sector, closely followed by permanent roles in the private sector. The softest upturn in demand was seen for temporary staff in the private sector, which expanded only marginally.
• Seven of the ten monitored job sectors recorded increases in demand for permanent staff during May. Hotel & Catering led the upturn, followed by Accounting/Financial. Retail saw a notable decline, while slight falls were registered for IT & Computing and Construction.
• Temporary vacancies expanded in just over half of the ten broad employment sectors midway through the second quarter. Hotel & Catering and Engineering recorded the strongest rises in temp staff demand. Retail once again was placed at the bottom of the rankings.

The Learning and Work Institute have issued a report on developing skills for the UK manufacturing industry:

• 57% of manufacturers surveyed (57%) cite challenges accessing a skilled workforce.
• 55% of manufacturers are experiencing shortages in advanced manufacturing skills and 61% in traditional manufacturing skills, such as fabrication, welding and mechanical engineering.
• 63% of manufacturers believe that advanced manufacturing technologies and processes are currently impacting their skills needs, and 69% believe they will in the next five years.
• 45% of manufacturers report an increased demand for higher technical qualifications/higher apprenticeships and 38% for degrees/ degree apprenticeships. However, demand for qualifications at all levels is expected to increase over the next five years, emphasising the need to increase enrolments.
• 63% of manufacturers surveyed believe that young people are not coming through the education and skills system with the necessary advanced manufacturing skills and 70% believe that they are not coming through with the necessary traditional manufacturing skills.
• Despite this, 51% of manufacturers are not working with education or skills providers to try and ensure their skills needs are met.
• Three in five young people are unlikely to consider a career in manufacturing. Young women are three times less likely than young men (18% vs 54%). This is despite over nine in ten young people believing technical qualifications or an apprenticeship can lead to a highly-skilled, well-paid career.
• Young people attracted to manufacturing are drawn by the opportunity for 'hands-on' work, and its status as an innovative, high-tech sector providing highly skilled, well-paid work. Many young people who would not consider a career in manufacturing hold negative perceptions about the opportunities the sector can offer, such as physical work, low salaries and limited career progression.
• 83% of young people feel they face barriers to pursuing a career in manufacturing and 48% have never received information about a career in manufacturing. In order to pursue a career in manufacturing 88% would find additional information helpful.
• Young women are significantly more likely to cite facing barriers to pursuing a career in manufacturing due to a lack of knowledge and understanding; including about which qualifications and training they need, what manufacturing jobs are available, what a manufacturing career involves and what skills manufacturing employers require. They are also more likely to report the need for additional information.
• 41% of employers are not taking any actions to inspire young people to consider a career in manufacturing. 14% are helping educators gain industry knowledge and experience, despite 61% believing this could help attract young people to the sector.

Indeed report that vacancies and job-to-job moves remain 30% and 20% above pre-pandemic levels, respectively, suggesting a more confident workforce post-pandemic.

Indeed also report posts for roles in social science, aviation and several healthcare categories are well above pre-pandemic levels, while job postings in mathematics (including jobs for data analysis, data scientists and statisticians), legal, media & communications, beauty & wellness and tech occupations are all below pre-pandemic levels.

Written by

Charlie Ball

Head of labour market intelligence

Jisc