A speech by Alexandra Heath, the RBA’s head of economic analysis, has revealed that full-time job prospects for recent university graduates has fallen to the lowest level since the early-1990s recession, whereas many are also underemployed:
The risks of higher education not working out have risen over the past few years. Almost one-quarter of students who started a bachelor degree in 2014 or 2015 left university without a qualification (Graph 9). This attrition rate was almost 5 percentage points higher than it was for students who commenced their degree in 2009.
On top of this, the probability of finding a full-time job shortly after graduating from university has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2008. This probability is similar to what was observed during the early 1990s recession. More positively, even though there has been a decline in the share of graduates getting full-time jobs within four months of graduating, the probability that they get a full-time job eventually hasn’t changed much (Graph 10)…
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Leith van Onselen is Chief Economist at the MB Fund and MB Super. He is also a co-founder of MacroBusiness.
Leith has previously worked at the Australian Treasury, Victorian Treasury and Goldman Sachs.
