The past couple of decades
have witnessed substantial growth in the
finance, tech and consulting industries. At the same
time, the public sector has seen an extended
period of pay restraint. These twin trends have led
to warnings of a ‘brain drain' from the
public sector.
A new iteration of an IFS
working paper studies the jobs
of employed new graduates
from top universities in the first year after
graduation. It finds that:
-
Among employed graduates
from the top five universities, entry into
finance, tech or consulting rose from around one in
six (17%) in 2008 to more than one in four (27%) in
2019. By contrast,
the share among all university graduates stayed constant
at 13%.
-
At the same time, salary
differentials shifted in favour of the private
sector. In 2008, new graduates from the top five
universities entering the public sector earned slightly
(1%) more on average than their private sector
counterparts in their first year of work. By
2019, those in the private sector earned 12%
more.
-
Nonetheless, there
is little evidence that this has led to a
substantial decline in the share of graduates from
the top universities entering the public sector.
Among 2019 graduates from these universities who
started work in the first year after graduation, 13%
went into the public
sector (primarily into central
government) – only slightly below the share doing
so among the 2008 cohort (14%) and
above the share among
the 2012 cohort (9%). Public sector entry
among all other university graduates and those
leaving
education following A levels or GCSEs has declined since
2008.
Clara von Bismarck-Osten, a
PhD Scholar at the IFS and author of the working
paper, said:
‘Top universities are increasingly
sending their graduates to tech, finance and
consulting. Despite these lucrative
opportunities, the share
of top-university graduates entering
the public sector, and particularly central
government, is unchanged since 2008 – in
fact, people entering the public
sector after their studies seem to
increasingly be those with the strongest
qualifications.'
Read the comment
here.
ENDS
Notes to Editor
Are graduates from the top universities choosing finance and
tech over the public sector? is an IFS comment
by Clara von
Bismarck-Osten and Tom Waters
You can read the comment on the
IFS website.
