If you’re reading this and you are, like myself, an unemployed graduate – perhaps taking a break from trawling through Indeed or tailoring a cover letter – take heart, you are not alone!
Taken together, unemployed graduates in the UK number more than the current population of Luxemburg – a whopping 700,000!
Unfortunately, the fierce competition for places will probably prevent us from uniting to form a microstate. According to job search site Adzuna, the number of graduate jobs has plunged 19.1 percent to below 10,000.
Meanwhile 800,000 people graduate every year. A quick survey of any job board speaks to the truth of this. Most positions are inundated with hundreds of applications within days.
One of my friends in a similar position commented that “the level of competition is so fierce that applying to a new job 24 hours after it’s posted feels pointless.”
Julian, an English and photography graduate, works one or two days per week at a restaurant, but spends most of the time looking for a job. “Many of the chefs, line cooks and bar staff I work alongside have masters degree qualifications in everything from software development to mechanical engineering,” he tells me.
“Regardless of their talent, it’s the same story across the board: the job market is frozen solid. Since graduating last year the farthest I’ve gotten after non-stop applications was a 45-minute AI online interview after which I was rejected. Even entry-level roles as an office administrator or receptionist are asking for up to four or five years experience.”
The Office for National Statistics reckons that almost a million people aged 16 to 24 in the UK are NEETS, standing for ‘not in education, employment or training’. That translates to one in seven young people. This doesn’t even take into account graduates who are in precarious part-time employment, or who are underemployed.
According to a report by High Fliers Research, applications by graduates have doubled since 2023. Recruitment of graduates is currently at its lowest level for 13 years, after the numbers hired fell by 24.5 per cent between 2022 and 2025.
‘Jobpocalypse’
The situation is not likely to improve anytime soon. According to the same study, graduate vacancies at the top 100 recruiters are set to fall this year. Analysts have started to throw around the term ‘jobpolcalypse’.
Why has the situation gotten so bad? In an interview for the Financial Times, CEO Chris Eldridge hits the nail on the head when he states simply that “companies don’t want to risk their capital right now.”
The uncertainty in the economy means that businesses are cutting back on entry-level intake. In a period of low business confidence, graduate jobs are the first thing to go. This uncertainty has created a backlog of graduates.
The alumni of 2026 will be competing with cohorts of 2023, 2024, and 2025. Other factors are also at play. Many more basic tasks which would have been done by workers in entry-level positions are now done by AI.
In addition companies have reallocated funds from recruitment to invest in AI according to The Guardian. This shows the true nature of the capitalist system: companies are more interested in making quick profits than supporting the next generation.
Starmer, by increasing the minimum wage and employers’ National Insurance contribution, has also disincentivised investment into employment. Labour is being crushed between the working class, which expects to see a rise in its living standards, and the bosses, who want to cut wages to remain competitive and turn profits.
Adding to these pressures, many graduates are suffering from the effects of Covid and the crisis in the NHS. The number of graduates who are unable to work due to health reasons has doubled to 240,000 from 2019.
Many are doubting the point of doing a degree in the first place. One graduate told me how “looking on job boards, it felt like my degree was entirely useless, none of the listings even mentioned a degree in the description.”
“It seemed like I had just wasted four years of my life and lots of money as well,” he continued. “Factoring in my disability, which narrowed the pool of jobs even further, meant the search went from extremely hard to virtually impossible.” This person is now doing a masters degree, out of desperation.
As always, bourgeois commentators can’t see the woods for the trees. Many can diagnose the individual problems – lack of investment, AI, the crisis in the NHS – but then fail to put the pieces together. The unemployment crisis is one symptom of the underlying disease: the long-term decline of British capitalism.
Overproduction in the world market, a factor inherent to capitalist competition, means it is not profitable for companies to invest. Poverty exists amid plenty. In this climate, businesses would much rather hand profit back to their CEOs in stock buybacks than invest in new potential.
Like its neighbours in Europe, The UK is teetering on the edge of a recession as a result of a precarious and volatile world situation. As growth declines globally, the US has slapped tariffs on the UK to protect their home industry. Energy costs also continue to rise due to the international situation which is hitting UK businesses .
Only the working class will be able to stop this anarchic system that throws the youth onto the scrapheap of history for simply being born at the wrong time.
