A look at the 2022 Graduate Market Report by High Fliers

On a yearly basis, High Fliers produces a report detailing a study of the latest graduate vacancies and salaries at the UK’s best-known and most successful employers. This research was undertaken in January 2022.

For this post, we have taken some key statistics, points and graphics from the 2022 Graduate Market Report, which we feel are particularly useful for international students.

The full report can be downloaded by clicking here.

The number of graduates recruited in 2021 was higher than expected – an annual increase of 9.4% compared with graduate recruitment in 2020.
The country’s top employers recruited 2,400 more graduates in 2021 than had been expected at the beginning of the 2020-2021 academic year.
The number of graduate jobs on offer in 2022 is expected to increase by a further 15.7%, the largest annual rise in graduate recruitment for more than fifteen years.

Employers in all fifteen of the key industries & business sectors for new graduates are planning to expand their recruitment in 2022. The number of graduate vacancies available is now 11% higher than the pre-pandemic peak in graduate recruitment recorded in 2019.
A record 7,400 entry-level vacancies available for university-leavers in accounting & professional services firms.
For the first time in eight years, graduate starting salaries at the UK’s leading graduate employers are set to increase in 2022, to a new median starting salary of £32,000.

Three of the country’s best-known graduate employers are paying salaries in excess of £50,000 this year and a quarter of the country’s top employers now offer graduate starting salaries of more than £40,000.
The highest published graduate starting salaries for 2022 include law firms White & Case (£52,000) and Allen & Overy, Baker McKenzie, Clifford Chance, Freshfields, Herbert Smith Freehills, Latham Watkins, Linklaters and Slaughter and May (each £50,000), technology company TPP and consulting firm Newton (each £45,000), and retailer Aldi (£44,000).
Feedback about universities’ virtual careers fairs was very mixed, with up to two-fifths of employers who participated in them describing the events as ‘not very successful’.
Employers have increased the number of universities that they have actively marketed their graduate vacancies at during the 2021-2022 recruitment season, but one in six employers has stopped targeting individual universities altogether.
Three-fifths of the UK’s leading employers said they had received fewer graduate job applications during this recruitment season, compared to last year.
Now that most Coronavirus restrictions have been lifted, almost three-quarters of the UK’s top graduate employers are planning to deliver in-person vacation work placements and internships this summer, but some placements and taster programmes are expected to remain online.

Source: High Fliers Research Limited www.highfliers.co.uk