Early Careers: The Market Is Cooling Not Collapsing

The public narrative around early careers has become increasingly pessimistic. Rising employment costs, weaker economic growth and advances in AI have fuelled concern that entry-level opportunities are disappearing. However, our research suggests a more nuanced picture. While the market has undoubtedly become more challenging, the evidence points to continued employer demand for early careers rather than widespread
retrenchment.

According to our survey of more than 500 senior HR, Talent, Learning and Early Careers professionals, more than half (55%) of employers expect their early careers hiring to increase over the next two to three years, while a further 23% expect it to remain broadly unchanged. Fewer than one in five (18%) anticipate a reduction. Views on AI are more mixed, but two-thirds (67%) of employers expect AI and automation either to increase the number of entry-level roles in their organisation or leave them broadly unchanged, compared with just over one-quarter (27%) who expect a reduction. Despite growing uncertainty, the overall picture is one of continued employer demand for early careers, with most organisations expecting hiring to remain stable or grow over the coming years.

The broadly positive outlook should not be interpreted as an absence of challenges. Employers continue to face significant constraints on expanding early careers recruitment. Around one-third identify difficulty finding candidates with the required skills or work readiness (32%) and short-term business pressures limiting investment (31%) as major or critical barriers. Uncertainty about the long-term return on investment (29%) and rising employment costs (29%) also feature prominently, while around one in four cite limited line manager capacity, insufficient internal capability to support development and the impact of AI and automation. These findings suggest that employers remain committed to early careers but are doing so in a more constrained operating environment.

These strategic constraints are reflected in employers’ day-to-day recruitment experience. BPP’s March 2026 research found that employers receive high volumes of unqualified applicants (51%) while still struggling to attract enough high-quality candidates (47%), pointing to a mismatch between application volume and candidate suitability. Screening and shortlisting are also time intensive (33%), while candidate drop-out during recruitment (30%) further reduces conversion. Together, these findings suggest that recruiting early career talent has become more resource intensive, even where employers remain committed to hiring.

Looking beyond employer expectations, evidence from the wider graduate labour market also paints a similarly nuanced picture. High Fliers’ The Graduate Market in 2026, an annual survey of the UK’s 100 leading graduate employers, reports that graduate vacancies have fallen for a third consecutive year and are now around a quarter below their 2022 peak. This reduction is larger than that recorded during the 2008-09 recession.  

However, graduate recruitment tells only part of the story. The Graduate Outcomes survey, published annually by HESA, provides a different perspective by tracking graduates’ employment, further study and other activities approximately 15 months after completing higher education. The latest release, published in June 2026, includes responses from 353,755 graduates who completed their studies during the 2023/24 academic year. Despite a more challenging recruitment market, graduate employment has remained relatively resilient:

• 81% of graduates were in employment or unpaid work 15 months after graduation, only slightly below the post-pandemic peak of 83% in 2021/22 and broadly in line with the 80–82% range recorded over the past five years.
• 75% of employed graduates were working in professional-level occupations, only slightly below the 76% recorded in 2022/23.
• 7% of graduates reported being unemployed and looking for work, up from 6% in 2022/23 and 5% in both 2020/21 and 2021/22.

Rather than presenting contradictory evidence, these datasets provide complementary perspectives on the labour market. High Fliers focuses on recruitment into graduate programmes at the UK’s largest employers, while HESA provides a broader view of graduates’ destinations across the labour market. The contrast suggests that, while the traditional ‘front door’ into professional employment is becoming narrower and more competitive, graduate talent continues to find employment across the wider labour market.

The contrast also illustrates how different indicators can paint very different pictures of the state of early careers. As Charlie Ball, Head of Labour Market Intelligence at Jisc, explains, “the main problem facing early careers is not a collapse in demand, but a deterioration in the quality of the information environment around the labour market, where noise, misinterpretation and confusion can make conditions appear far worse than the underlying evidence suggests.” Two developments help explain why this perception has emerged.

First, today’s labour market is often being compared with an exceptional period. In
the aftermath of Covid-19, UK vacancies reached a record high of around 1.3 million in 2022. Against this unusually strong benchmark, subsequent declines may reflect a return towards longer-term labour market conditions rather than a fundamental collapse in employer demand.

Second, the experience of applying for early careers roles has changed significantly. The ISE Student Recruitment Survey (2025) found that the average graduate vacancy attracted 140 applications in 2024–25, the highest ratio on record. While multiple factors are likely to be contributing to this increase, generative AI has reduced the time and effort required to prepare and tailor applications, enabling candidates to apply for a greater number of roles. As a result, employers receive significantly higher volumes of applications for each vacancy, making recruitment more resource-intensive and reinforcing perceptions of an increasingly difficult labour market, even where underlying demand for early career talent remains resilient.

Overall, the evidence so far suggests that early careers is not disappearing but changing. Employer demand remains resilient, yet the routes through which people enter work are becoming more competitive, and the labour market has become increasingly difficult to interpret. Challenging the narrative of decline is important, but it does not fully explain why early careers has become an increasingly prominent strategic issue for employers. That question requires looking beyond labour market demand to the changing nature of work itself and the capabilities organisations increasingly need from people entering the workforce.