This week, hysteria over the graduate jobs crisis has reached a new peak. Widely reported research claimed that the number of graduate jobs has fallen below 10,000 for the first time since 2016, with many pointing to the rise of AI as a primary factor affecting the market. However, this research is misleading. It pigeonholes graduate jobs as those specifically targeted at graduates, rather than any that could conceivably be attained by those who have just left university. Entry-level jobs, broadly, could be taken on by graduates, rather than just those with “graduate” in the title or job description, as the data points to.

After leaving university, I immediately took up a job which did not have the word “graduate” in the title. The role did, however, require a degree, so that definition does not feel particularly robust. What, then, are the job prospects for graduates?

There are other data sets which paint a different picture. The Office for National Statistics tracks online job adverts across 412 occupations, with data going from 2017 up to November of last year. Stripping out jobs that are either too senior — such as chief executives, directors or managers — and non-traditional graduate jobs like manual work, there are 140 occupations which are the usual graduate job routes. There are a few hard cases, and it is unwise to focus too much on specific job types, but the broader figures do not bear out the panic.

When looking into the data through time, a clear picture emerges. In November 2023, there were 299,370 online job vacancies in these occupations. But in November 2025, there were 307,476 online vacancies. That’s hardly a collapse in graduate job prospects in recent years. Though this shouldn’t be interpreted to mean that things are easy for graduates. There are over 900,000 graduates every year, with a large proportion going into the labour market, and competition for employment remains intense. Given the size of that number, the bigger culprit is clearly the overproduction of graduates by Britain’s bloated higher education system.

The data also varies by sector. IT and digital technology vacancies for graduates appear to be rising sharply, according to the ONS data, with 10,000 more adverts in November 2025 than in November 2023. Real estate, engineering, and construction also appear to be growing strongly, although this is more likely to be crushed by the collapse in housebuilding.

White-collar jobs are likely to be the focus of swinging AI replacement in the future, but this hasn’t appeared in the data yet. The number of solicitor roles advertised has been flat, and the number of management consultant and business analyst roles has increased by over 400. There has been a slight fall in accountants and tax experts, but these could be temporary blips. Overall, there may be slightly fewer advertised roles in these sectors. It should also be remembered, though, that these types of roles make up less than a quarter of the graduate job role vacancies identified in the ONS data.

Surprisingly, the biggest fall has been in medicine and healthcare. There have been sharp drops in physiotherapists, specialist medical practitioners, pharmacists and even veterinarians. Perhaps we should be worrying more about “peak healthcare” than the rise of AI.

This is not a message of complacency. AI will revolutionise the job market, and it will hit traditional graduate sectors such as accounting and finance hard. Britain does have time to adjust its economy for this new world and create decent employment prospects for young people, but there will surely be an adjustment period which hits graduates. Still, losing ourselves in panic about technology would be letting future generations down.

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Andrew O’Brien is the former Director of Policy at the think tank Demos and currently Head of Secretariat of the Independent Commission on Neighbourhoods. He writes in a personal capacity.

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