British graduates see 4.2 per cent year-on-year pay rise

Young graduates in Britain have witnessed a year on year average wage increase of £1,000, a growth of 4.2 per cent.

The wage growth increase for British employees has brought the nominal median salaries of young graduates up to £25,000. As a comparison, the figure for non-graduates in the same age range was £18,000.

'High skilled' decline

However, new data from the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) shows that the number of employed graduates in the target age group in highly skilled roles has fallen from 63% in 2006.

The decrease is not just limited to recent graduates, with postgraduates and non-graduates also falling from 71% in 2006 to 66% in 2015.

Possible causes

BIS blamed a changing labour market, but also added a caveat about the way statisticians classify high-skilled work.

The department noted: “These trends could be driven by various factors, such as shifting of job composition towards the medium and low-skilled sectors of the economy, or an increasing demand for high-level skills across sectors of the economy that have traditionally focused on medium or low skills.”

“These changes may make the current classification of high-skilled employment less relevant than in the past,” it added.