2004:24 R

Establishing on the labour market concerning 1999/2000 and 2000/01 graduates

Compared to the results for those who graduated one year previously the established percentage had fallen by one per cent. This reduction may be regarded as negligible when considering the fact that general economic development had been negatively affected by a decline in the economy and rising unemployment. An explanation why the establishment process did not have a greater effect on higher education graduates is that many of those who were educated at universities and university colleges at the time had set their sights on the general labour market where the demand trend for that particular period differed from that within other parts of the economy.

Survey findings point to a significant downturn in the establishment figures for, e.g., graduate engineers, university college engineers and graduates in economics, while the figures for those established in the growing groups of teacher graduates and health care graduates are either unchanged or increased. Physicians, nurses and pharmacists belong to those groups that are establishing themselves very rapidly on the labour market. The establishment rate in these groups was 90 per cent one and a half years after graduation for those who graduated in the academic year 2000/01. For the majority of the graduate groups, the percentage established on the labour market one and a half years after graduation is between 70 and 90 per cent. The upper span of this percentage interval relates to large graduate groups such as university graduate engineers, university college engineers and teachers.
One group with negative deviation concerns those students who graduated in the arts. Only one third of this group established itself on the labour market one to one and a half years after graduation. The establishment percentage for humanists with bachelor’s or master degrees was also relative low – between 40 and 50 percent.

Establishment studies are based on information acquired from a register kept by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS). Information registered with the CBS includes data from the National Swedish Tax board about incomes and unemployment as well as information about labour market political measures under the aegis of the Labour Market Administration. An establishment variable has been created through further processing of the registrations at the CBS’s Prognosis Institute.

Data procured from the CBS’s vocational register shows that those who have established themselves on the labour market are generally to be found within anticipated vocational sectors when bearing in mind the respective degrees involved, but the vocational sector spread is much wider for those groups who have most difficulty in establishing themselves on the labour market. Generally speaking, the spread throughout the vocational sectors is also greater among graduates with general degrees, i.e., bachelor’s and master’s degrees than it is among graduates with vocational degrees.

The report also contains information on the establishment percentage in the various graduate groups with a breakdown coverage of the higher education institutes where the degree was taken.

Such a breakdown shows, e.g., that when it involves the large group with degrees in engineering, there is practically no difference between the various institutes of higher education; distinct differences exist between the many other groups. When it comes to dealing with small groups, the difference in many cases can be the result of circumstances. Moreover the local labour market plays, of course, a major role in the establishment process. Establishment will take longer if the students are compelled to seek an institute of higher education located away from their current study base.