Graduate job quality in the UK – is there a need to look beyond earnings and occupation type?

Recent decades have seen growing interest in the quality of employment available to citizens, with decent work for all being one of the objectives outlined in the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals developed by the United Nations. Consequently, this has generated debate about how we define job quality, with the literature indicating that this is a multi-faceted concept and relates to those features of a person’s work that influence their wellbeing. In the UK, job quality is considered to consist of eighteen indicators covering seven broad dimensions. Despite this, earnings is the only recognised job quality indicator used when assessing the graduate labour market. The other outcome that is often drawn upon (whether or not a graduate moves into ‘highly skilled’ employment) is generated using occupation type and is not in itself an indicator of job quality. The purpose of this webinar will be to firstly highlight how earnings are not particularly well correlated with wellbeing for recent graduates. This will be followed by the presentation of a new composite measure for one of the seven components of employment quality – the ‘job design and nature of work’. This is non-financial in nature and encompasses features of work such as the extent to which it provides a sense of purpose, utilises the individual’s skills and offers progression opportunities. We shall illustrate how the composite variable has a positive association with wellbeing, before demonstrating how the measure can complement current statistics produced on graduate outcomes to help us better understand how graduates are faring in the labour market.