Key Points:
- The number of graduate opportunities remains well above pre-pandemic levels but is tracking 21% lower in early 2024 compared to the same period last year.
- Graduate hiring patterns have been unusual, with the volume of job postings in 2022 and 2023 remaining elevated throughout the year, compared to the more traditional March peak.
- Jobseeker searches for graduate jobs are low and have trended downwards over the past couple of years, a potential sign that jobseekers are finding graduate positions much faster than in the past.
- Pay transparency has increased considerably for graduate job postings but remains low overall.
Demand for Australian graduates has eased over the past year, with the number of opportunities in early 2024 falling well short of the same period last year. It follows a red-hot graduate job market over the past few years when competition for talent was fierce and many roles difficult to fill.
For university students, the final year of study is often a difficult balancing act between school and applying for graduate employment. Some lucky graduates secure a job early, waiting out the school year until their new career begins, while others face a hectic end-of-year scramble. Competition is often fierce, not merely among employers but also among graduates vying for the most lucrative positions.
In fact, competition for talent has been so intense recently that many employers changed their graduate hiring patterns. Traditionally, graduate recruitment peaked in March and was much lower throughout the remainder of the year. From 2018 to 2021, graduate job postings peaked 90% higher, as a share of total job postings, than its average throughout the year.
That trend changed dramatically in 2022, likely in response to recruitment difficulties and an inability to fill some graduate roles. Across 2022 and 2023, graduate job postings, as a share of total job postings, peaked just 33% higher than the average throughout the year. In those two years, graduate job postings still rose sharply in March but remained elevated throughout the year.
Demand for graduates softened in early 2024 following record-breaking 2023
On average, there were 2.4x as many graduate job postings in Australia each day in 2023 compared to both 2018 and 2019. The number of job postings mentioning ‘graduate’ in their job title was 8.2% higher in 2023 than in 2022.
But from January to March 2024, the number of graduate job postings tracked 21% lower than the same period in 2023. While that is still a healthy number and well above pre-pandemic levels, it does point towards a shift in graduate hiring conditions. At this early stage, we expect the volume of graduate opportunities this year to fall short of both 2022 and 2023.
Graduate hiring patterns have changed recently
In response to widespread skill and talent shortages, Australian employers have changed their graduate hiring patterns in recent years. Rather than locking up graduates early, as has traditionally been the case, many roles were left unfilled and were advertised again and again before being filled. Some graduate programmes even became evergreen, remaining active and accepting candidates throughout the year.
From 2018 to 2021, graduate job postings peaked 86% higher, as a share of total job postings, than its average throughout the year. By comparison, in 2022 and 2023 the hiring peak was just 30% above the annual average. It’s too early to say whether graduate recruitment in 2024 will revert to the old hiring patterns or be similar to what we’ve seen during the pandemic recovery.
Jobseekers are less likely to search for graduate jobs
While there has been strong demand for Australian university graduates in recent years, there has been lower search activity from jobseekers. In 2023, 0.4% of Australian jobseeker searches were for graduate positions, down from 0.6% in 2022 and 0.8% in 2021. Search activity was unchanged from the same period last year through the first few months of 2024.
There are several possible explanations for lower graduate search volumes. First, there might be less friction in the graduate job market with graduates finding jobs faster than in the past, requiring less frequent job searches. The search patterns of a graduate who locks in a role by April will differ considerably from one that does not finalise employment until September. If we have more of the former and less of the latter, then that could cause a decline in search activity.
Second, in a tight labour market there may simply be a lack of suitable candidates looking for entry-level graduate positions.
And third, jobseekers potentially have more options in a tight labour market, which might push some recent graduates to forego the traditional graduate programme in favour of other opportunities.
Pay transparency in graduate recruitment has increased
Pay transparency for graduate jobs has increased considerably in recent years, although it still falls well short of the national average. In 2023, almost 23% of graduate job postings featured pay information, up from 19% a year earlier, and 12% five years ago. The first big jump in pay transparency occurred in 2020 — admittedly on low volumes due to the pandemic — with the second major jump occurring last year.
By comparison, more than a third (35%) of all Australian job postings on Indeed provided pay data in 2023. That may seem like a large gap, but it’s a bit of an illusion. The composition of Australian graduate job postings differs markedly from the composition of total Australian job postings. There are a range of sectors that typically feature high levels of pay transparency but have no graduate footprint, including sectors such as personal care and construction, and other sectors where large graduate intakes are commonplace. When controlling for differences in the composition of graduate versus total job postings, the pay transparency gap disappears.
Nevertheless, pay transparency is still quite low overall, and it could hamper the recruitment efforts of some graduate employers. One-third of Gen Z respondents — the age group most likely to be seeking a graduate-level job — said that pay and compensation were the top reasons they chose to apply for a role, according to the Qualtrics + Indeed International Job Seeker Survey (July 2023). And 30% of Gen Z respondents said that the lack of salary information in a job advertisement was the biggest reason they chose not to apply.
Some graduate employers may be banking on the prestige or reputation of their organisation to drive applications — and some applicants may value brand recognition over pay in some circumstances — but it could be limiting the number of high-quality candidates they receive.
Conclusion
Australia’s graduate job market remains healthy, but conditions appear to have softened somewhat in early 2024. Graduate recruitment is unique because there is often a long lag — in many cases, six months or longer — between the hiring process and the successful candidate beginning a job. And so softer demand for graduate talent in early 2024 may reflect some apprehension about the future of the Australian economy. Monitoring graduate recruitment patterns in the months to come may provide important insight into the outlook for the Australian labour market.
Overall, graduate recruitment dynamics have shifted significantly in recent years. Recruitment has proven challenging and jobseeker search volumes have fallen considerably, perhaps because graduate talent are snapping up jobs earlier than normal. Graduate recruiters have changed their hiring patterns to reflect these dynamics, with many graduate programmes remaining open for candidates longer than in the past.
Methodology
To identify graduate job postings, we filter job posting titles for the word ‘graduate’. This identifies Australian employer graduate programmes and opportunities that primarily go to students completing their final year of university study.
Graduate-based job searches reflect job searches that mention ‘graduate’. This includes terms such as ‘graduate’ or ‘graduate programme’.
The data on pay transparency involves dividing the number of job postings with salary by the total number of job postings in a given month. Pay information is extracted from postings published on Indeed.com. Salaries advertised as being paid daily or weekly were omitted from the analysis.
