Vocational graduates, such as those in ECEC, are more likely to get jobs, research finds

Those who choose a vocational career path – completing qualifications with a strong practical, ‘hands on’ focus – are more likely to move into employment once they graduate, new research has found.

 

The 2020 Graduate Outcomes Survey report found that COVID-19 had a major impact on the Australian labour market, including graduate employment outcomes. As could be expected, graduate employment rates also declined between 2019 and 2020.

 

Federal Minister for Education Dan Tehan said the results served as further evidence the Government’s Job-ready Graduates package would help Australia’s COVID-19 recovery.

 

“The Job-ready Graduates package will provide more university places for Australian students, make it cheaper to study in areas of expected job growth and provide more funding and support to regional students and universities,” he said.

 

Structured in such a way as to encourage students to choose a degree in areas of national priority including teaching, nursing and STEM, the package hopes to deliver better employment outcomes and assist Australia’s economic recovery from the pandemic.

 

“In this year’s budget, our Government provided $550 million for additional university places and short courses to give more Australians the opportunity to improve their job prospects through education. When combined with the Job-ready Graduates package, there will be up to 30,000 additional university places for Australians next year. We introduced these reforms because students are facing an unprecedented economic challenge caused by COVID-19,” Mr Tehan said. 

 

Pharmacy graduates were the most successful, with 96 per cent finding employment post graduation. Engineering graduates also performed strongly, at 83 per cent, while the overall undergraduate full-time employment rate fell from 72.2 per cent in 2019 to 68.7 per cent in 2020, due to COVID-19.

 

The 2020 Graduate Outcomes Survey, which shows the short-term employment outcomes of higher education graduates four months after completion of their studies, confirms findings from the ABS Labour Force Survey that service-based activities have been among the worst affected, with the undergraduate full-time employment rate falling sharply in Communications, down 7.3 percentage points to 52.8 per cent, and creative arts, down 7.1 percentage points to 45.8 per cent.

 

The 2020 Graduate Outcomes Survey report and visual analytics can be found here.