Graduates and their Engagement of Jobcentre Plus Services in Difficult Times: A Mixed Methods Study

As the economy has become more knowledge based, policy makers have previously placed emphasis on investing in human capital as a route to economic success. One key trend has been an increase in the number of university graduates. The policy rationale for this refers to creating workforces that are able to meet the challenges of technologically advanced, and diverse market economies in an inter-connected global world where economies are competing against each other globally. This has led to policy makers emphasising the need to improve high level skills through expansion of universities – a development that has substantially affected workforce educational demographics in the UK. However, it has not been ascertained how such recent labour entrants negotiate the transition process of leaving higher education and acquiring employment, with instances of unemployment and underemployment increasing in prevalence amongst graduates in recent years.
Whether current social policy (in this case in the form of public employment services, such as Jobcentre Plus) has been able to engage with such issues sufficiently remains underexplored too. This thesis adopts a mixed methodology – involving an analysis of 11 years of UK labour force survey data (from 2002 – 2013), and 26 interviews with recent graduates. It suggests that recent graduate transitions have experienced labour market insecurity with more regularity, and that the current social policy framework could be improved. Furthermore, it investigates whether graduate transitions are a ‘missing’ group in youth transitions research. Overall, it attempts to provide insight into how young people experience precarious transitions to the labour market.