What do business and administrative studies graduates do?

Anthony Cotterill, head of student employability at the University of East Anglia, examines the destinations of graduates from subjects in the field of business and administrative studies

Business and administrative graduates study a variety of subjects, summarised as: economics, finance and accountancy, business and management, hospitality, leisure, tourism and transport (HLTT), and marketing.

This cohort of business and administrative studies graduates performed well in the competitive graduate labour market compared with all graduates reported in What do graduates do? 2024/25. They were more likely to be in full-time employment, with 63.9% being so compared with 59% of all graduates. They had the second lowest levels of part-time employment and unemployment across all clusters of subjects behind technology, engineering and maths graduates, and science graduates respectively.

Working and learning

As well as impressive levels of full-time employment, this group was above average for working and studying with 12.1% of graduates in this group compared to 10.5% for all graduates. This may explain why there were significantly lower numbers of graduates in this group who were only in further study at 3.6% compared to the average of 6.7% across all subjects, with science graduates leading the way for further study at 13.3%.

Business and administrative graduates were similar to social sciences graduates, where working and studying was the highest of all the groups at 13.3%. Within the group this peaked at 18.5% for finance and accountancy graduates and 14.2 % for economics graduates, with law, psychology and sports science occupying the other top five slots across all subjects. This highlights the prevalence of professional qualifications and graduate schemes available to these graduates. For students undertaking any further study in this group, 47.7% reported professional qualifications as the type, which was significantly higher than all other groups, the next highest being technology, engineering and maths at 30.6%.

Graduate-level employment varied across the group with 82.9% of economics graduates employed in graduate level roles compared to HLTT where just over half were in graduatelevel work, one of the lowest across all business and administrative subjects.

Just working, not learning

Graduates in marketing were the exception to the rule. Marketing graduates had the highest level of full-time employment in the cluster at 70.7%, the fourth highest subject for full-time employment, with only civil engineering, electrical and electronic engineering, and mechanical engineering having higher levels.

However, marketing graduates were the least likely to have undertaken further study at 1.9%, much lower than the 6.7% of graduates undertaking further study from all subjects. When combined with the working and studying category, only 8.4% of marketing graduates occupied these two categories. Only design graduates reported less at 7.9%.

Earning, not learning

Average salaries in this group ranged from £24,912 for HLTT graduates, up to £36,100 for economics graduates. Economics graduates with no significant further study since graduation reported the highest salaries across all business and administrative subjects. In terms of salary, the value of significant further study is variable. Many subject areas, including economics and marketing in this group, show that graduates with significant further study since graduation earn less than those without. Across all subjects, average salaries for all graduates were £303 less per annum for graduates with significant further study since graduation.

Not working

More positively, graduates in this cluster had lower levels of unemployment in comparison to all other subjects except sciences. Business and management graduates had the lowest level of unemployment across subjects in the group at 5.5%.

This article was first published in the 2024/25 edition of What do graduates do?

Written by

Anthony Cotterill

Head of student employability

University of East Anglia