Today’s release of the annual ABS Education and Work publication has some good news on graduate employment. After a couple of years in which the total number of graduates with jobs stagnated, in 2005 compared to 2014 they were up by 7.5%. Growth in the number of graduates with managerial and professional jobs, the jobs the ABS classifies as requiring bachelor degrees or above, was lower at 5.3% – but that was still much better than in the two preceding years.

Converted to a percentages of the graduate population the improvement is harder to see. This is because the total number of graduates keeps increasing, up by 287,000 in a year according to this survey (completions according to the Department were 215,000 domestic students and 104,000 internationals – but the total number in the population is affected by migration in and out).

In 2015 the proportion of graduates in work with managerial or professional jobs was about 71%, while the proportion of all graduates with professional or managerial jobs was about 57%. While the time series is complicated by definition changes these are probably the lowest figures yet recorded, as seen in the chart below. However, the numbers are not as bad as recent graduate employment figures might suggest. This is partly because employment numbers improve over time, and partly because it takes time for new cohorts of graduates to significantly influence the total survey. Even with recent big graduating classes, the new entrants to the graduate pool are only about 6% of all graduates.