Australian university graduates are having a hard time finding employment after completing higher education. According to a research by the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders University, the proportion of fresh university graduates in full-time employment has dropped from 89 percent to 67 percent between 2008 and 2014.
ABC News reported that job prospects for students who have yet to complete their studies may continue to decline. Adjunct Professor Tom Karmel noted that the number of available jobs have continued to shrink with the supply of university graduates.
"That's not to say they won't get a job, but people do have to start thinking about the return that they get on their degrees," he added. "There certainly has been a huge increase in the supply, but what you would expect over time is for the labor market demand side of things to adjust, and that hasn't happened sufficiently over that period of time."
Dr. Karmel added that the drop had been uniform but the student-to-work ratio of some fields fared better than the others. In 2008, it was revealed that 97.5 percent of graduates from medicine were able to land a job. That figure, though, had dropped to 95 percent by 2014.
Swinburne University student Charlotte Henderson admitted that she was confident that she would be able to find a job after she finished her double degree of business and communication. For her friends, though, she is unsure.
"I know a lot of my friends are studying degrees that are a little bit more vague [sic] and are really, really struggling to find work in their area," she said. "I think most of our generation is pretty aware of that it's just getting harder and harder."
Meanwhile, according to UConn Today, University of Connecticut graduates were able to find jobs within a few months of graduating. 80 percent of undergraduates were employed or enrolled in higher education within four months of graduating. A few were participating in social service activities or serving in the army.
