Unemployment among graduates is rising steadily, and less than half of those who got their degrees last year are now in work. No surprise then that many are making plans to take their skills abroad, writes PAMELA DUNCAN
WITH MORE than 450,000 people on the Live Register, almost 60,000 unemployed graduates and around 57,000 new graduates coming on stream this year, you don’t need a maths degree to see that the figures just don’t add up for college leavers. The future for the class of 2010 is looking bleak – for many, the only options seem to be unemployment, emigration or a return to education.
Provisional figures from the Higher Education Authority's What Do Graduates Do?survey for 2009 indicate that 45 per cent of those who earned undergraduate degrees in 2009 are in employment, 43 per cent are in further education and 5 per cent are unavailable for work or further education.
At 7 per cent, the unemployment rate among these graduates is still significantly less than the national unemployment rate of 13.7 per cent; however, it is much higher than the 2 per cent unemployment rate which graduates enjoyed up until three years ago.
David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire in the US, says that initial unemployment among graduates can have a potentially long-term negative affect. Studies have shown that people who are unemployed for long spells in their youth can suffer depression, lack of job satisfaction, poor health and a substantial and permanent loss in future earnings.
“Even if you don’t experience unemployment . . . if you enter the labour market during a recession you enter lower down the pyramid and you never catch up because you’re coming in lower down the pecking order,” Blanchflower says.
The president of the Union of Students in Ireland (USI), Gary Redmond, says that if Ireland is to avoid a “brain drain”, it is imperative that graduates entering the market for the first time remain connected to the labour market.
It isn’t all bleak though. Louise Campbell, managing director of Robert Walters recruiting services, says there has been a slight upturn in the number of graduates being sought for finance, accounting and IT positions but notes that companies are also becoming more demanding of the level of graduates they are seeking.
“In 2007, when companies rang up looking for a graduate, academics didn’t matter that much,” she says. “Now, for the majority of these positions . . . the essential requirements will be a First or a 2.1 and some are asking for a minimum of 480 points in the Leaving Cert, so employers are getting pickier.
“The advice we are giving all graduates now is ‘don’t demand your dream job from day one, get your foot in the door’ . . . It’s a case of hanging in there and getting yourself noticed.”
The Education Graduate
Eimear Cassidy (21), from Co Cavan, has a Bachelor of Education degree (home economics with biology) from St Angela’s College in Sligo.
“I would like to get a home economics and biology job here in Ireland. I’ve probably sent nearly 60 CVs away at this stage and I’ve had three interviews but haven’t got any of the jobs. There were 43 in our year and just nine have jobs in Ireland. Most of them are doing maternity-leave cover and some just have three-month parental-leave contracts, so they’re not exactly stable.
“At the interviews I’ve been at, graduates would only have gotten maternity-leave jobs instead of permanent positions, so last year’s graduates are at the same interviews along with my classmates.
“At the minute a lot of people have applied to England just to keep our options open. It’s pretty much a last resort for everybody. Nobody actually wants to leave. A lot of us wouldn’t feel able for going over to England because we wouldn’t be familiar with the curriculum.
“I’m just completing a Tefl course to teach English abroad, so I think if I don’t get a job teaching home economics here, I’ll probably travel with it for the year. We all planned on working for a year or two and then travelling, but no one has the money to start travelling straight away.
“A few people are doing postgrads in areas that aren’t related to their primary degree, just to pass the time until the situation improves.There’s a lot of people in our year that haven’t even gotten one response back, who haven’t been for an interview yet, which is kind of heartbreaking.”
The Business Graduate
Ian Cawley (26), from Co Laois, has a degree in Business with French from Waterford Institute of Technology and a postgraduate LLB in law.
“I want to be a solicitor, specifically commercial law. I’m currently on an internship with a law firm . . . I’m the only one out of my specific class, but I know that in the wider class more people did .
“Out of the nine in my graduate entry class, two are looking to go down the graduate route, so they need to do the entrance exam for the King’s Inns at the end of the month and then they do a full year at the King’s Inns and then they ‘devil’ for a year for free with a barrister before they’re qualified.
“One of the guys is after going into a job with Bank of Ireland. About four of them have gone abroad – America, Australia, Canada. They’re going abroad for a break but they’re thinking, look, I’m not going to get a job here.
“The feeling is that it’s going to be very, very difficult. Some people have given up; some people are putting it on hold. A lot of people have applied for a Masters as a back-up but aren’t sure if they’re going to do it or not.
“It’s more difficult for smaller law firms now to take on trainee solicitors. Firstly they don’t have the work and, secondly, solicitors’ indemnity insurance has gone through the roof.
“It is a bit of a slog going down either the barrister or solicitor route . . . It’s going to be tough, but it has always been tough and it’s a bit tougher now.”
The Science Graduate
Marianne McGovern (22), from Raheny in Dublin, has a BSc in Physiology from UCD.
“I want to go on to become a dietitian. There’s no postgraduate course for dietetics in Ireland, so you have to go abroad. So my plan is to go to the North or to the UK to do a postgrad there. I’ve decided to take the year out to work up some money . . . to pay for my graduate course next year.
“I have put in, I’d say, over 90 CVs at this stage, and I’ve had three or four interviews . . . I’m searching for jobs like lab technicians, anything like that, and there was no hope, so I had to give up on that and look for waitressing jobs and shop jobs.It’s very disheartening. I’m educated, I have a lot of drive and I’m very hard-working.
“I might be getting either a loan from the bank or a loan from my parents, with the idea of paying it back either way. My mam and dad have four kids, I’m the eldest . . . so if I get a loan off them for a further course I would expect myself to pay them back in order that my brother and sister would have the opportunities that I have had.
“My classmates are all finding it very difficult . . . I don’t know anyone out there who’s not going on because any job that’s out there is being given to the people who have PhDs and Masters. If we’re coming out with a science degree it’s not good enough now because there are so few jobs.
“We’re disheartened – everyone was telling us at Leaving Cert, science is a great area to get into, definitely, go for it, and now we’ve come out with our degree and we’re back to square one.”
The Medicine Graduate
Alan Sugrue (24) was born in Limerick and grew up in Australia, and has just qualified in medicine from NUI Galway.
“I’m currently an intern in Galway University Hospital. The internship’s for a year, made up of four posts of three-month rotations in different specialities.
“A lot of people seem to be very keen to take a year out, so that’s an opportunity. I know a lot of people who have gone over to New Zealand and Australia to work as doctors in different hospitals, so it enables them to travel, to get some work experience and to see a bit of the world. The other option then would be to enter into the basic medical training or basic surgical training, depending on what you want to do.
“I think our prospects are pretty solid. I think we’re very lucky, we got a job where there seem to be places available. I don’t know what it will be like in the foreseeable future, but after graduating the jobs were there and we just kind of had to apply and go through the process.There’s a central matching scheme now in Dublin that does that, and I think probably everyone from my class managed to get placed in a job which they wanted.
“I think my classmates feel hopeful for the future. I think that everyone realises that we have to go away at some point in our lives really, to gain more experience. It’s kind of considered a prerequisite almost to working your way up the chain towards a consultant for those who enter into hospital medicine.
“So the prospects are good and there are a few good jobs overseas as well.”
