UK Graduates Forced To Work As Window Cleaners

Oh.. The shock & horror - UK graduates FORCED to take "elementary jobs" such as window cleaning. This article in typical Daily Mail sensation garbage news.

Graduates forced to take jobs as window cleaners and road sweepers - and 20,000 are unemployed SIX MONTHS after leaving university. Recent graduates are being forced to take jobs as road sweepers, window cleaners and office juniors, in a sign of increasing desperation in the job market. Figures published today showed 20,000 students were unemployed six months after getting their degrees, with men more likely to be out of work than women. Thousands more graduates took jobs that do not require a degree.

• Nearly one student in ten was unemployed six months after graduating.
• Women graduates fare better than men in the job market, data suggest.
• But two-thirds of graduates still make it into 'professional' occupations.

Overall, 20,415 UK and EU full-time university leavers were assumed to be unemployed after completing their first degree in 2011/12, according to data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). That's nearly one graduate in ten still languishing in his or her old bedroom. On face value this is around the same proportion as last year, although HESA warned that the latest figures are not directly comparable with previous years due to changes in the way they are collected.

Three years study for this? Around 9,695 graduates were working in 'elementary occupations', taking jobs as hospital porters, waiters, bartenders, road sweepers, window cleaners and shelf stackers.

Women are faring better than men in the job market, the data suggest. More than one in 10 (10.9 per cent) of male graduates whose whereabouts were known six months after they finished their first degree were jobless, compared to 7.2 per cent of women. The HESA statistics also look at the types of jobs graduates were in after gaining their degree. More than a third of new graduates working in the UK were in 'non-professional' jobs that did not necessarily require a degree, the most recent figures showed.

Around 9,695 people were working in 'elementary occupations', taking jobs as office juniors, hospital porters, waiters, bartenders, road sweepers, window cleaners, shelf stackers and lollipop men and women. Rising numbers were working in factories and sales and customer services. In total, 745 were working in factories or plants, against 720 last year, while 21,025 were working in roles such as sales assistant, caretaker, market trader and call centres. Last year this figure stood at 20,675.

But the largest group - 54,435 people, or nearly two-thirds of those graduates whose fate had been discovered - were in the graduate job level group described as 'professional occupations'. This includes vets, dentists, pharmacists, engineers, teachers and solicitors. Professor Michael Gunn, chair of the university group million+ and vice-chancellor of Staffordshire University said: 'Six months is a relatively short time to make a judgement about the value of getting a degree and the occupations which graduates will enter in the future. 'However, these statistics confirm that even in a very difficult labour market studying for a degree on a full-time or a part-time basis remains one of the best ways of securing employment and a career.'