According to newly released data, graduate jobs have dropped by nearly 50%. AI is among the given explanations for this drop; as are rising costs. Regardless of what’s most at fault here, though, this clearly isn’t a sustainable situation if it’s accurate:
‘The number of graduate jobs has fallen almost in half in the past year, according to new figures, as employers cut entry-level roles in favour of AI and battle rising costs’ – BBC https://t.co/dKT0XhBtyn
— Mark Williamson (@markrwilliamson) August 24, 2026
Data
The data in question comes from the job site Adzuna. As reported by the BBC:
Jobs website Adzuna said it had just 8,383 graduate vacancies listed in July, down from 15,397 at the same point last year.
Adzuna also found competition among job seekers across all levels is rising, with an average of 2.14 job seekers per vacancy in July, up from 1.93 a year earlier.
Adzuna is a search site for jobs. The service allows you to search every job site at once, with roles showing up in one easy-to-scroll list:
Adzuna is an aggregator, meaning most jobs aren’t directly uploaded to the site. As such, there could be other reasons why graduate jobs from sites like Indeed or TotalJobs aren’t pulling through. We’ve seen no suggestion this is happening here; at the same time we can’t confirm it isn’t. We also can’t confirm employers haven’t simply shifted their recruitment efforts to means other than job sites.
We aren’t the only ones to be suspicious anyway:
This is considered the most reliable data source for the top 100 graduate recruiters, and shows vacancies down 5.1% year-on-year for the 3rd year running. Interestingly though, grads from a small group of Russell Group plus are still highly targeted. https://t.co/howjH1l6nk
— Natasha Porter OBE (@NPorter_) August 24, 2026
The 5.1% figure mentioned above was for 2025, with High Fliers writing:
Two-fifths of the country’s top employers recruited fewer graduates in 2025 and recruitment fell in ten out of fifteen key industries & business sectors. Employers’ latest recruitment targets show that there are likely to be even fewer graduate jobs available in 2026 – a further decrease of 0.5% compared with last year. Graduate recruitment at the UK’s leading employers has now slumped by 24.5% since 2022 – a larger reduction than was recorded during the pandemic in 2020 or in the ‘Great Recession’ of 2008-2009, when graduate vacancies fell by 12.3% and 23.3% respectively.
A drop of 50% would suggest we’re in a period of employment uncertainty which is twice as bad as the Great Recession.
The final thing we’ll note here is that the Office for National Statistics has used Adzuna as a data source as recently as 2024. In other words, the site has served as a trusted source of data in the past.
Freefall
People are justifiably worried about generative AI taking their jobs. After all, the AI companies themselves have warned us that’s what’s going to happen. As we’ve reported in the past, however, many companies have ended up rowing back on their AI initiatives. In part this was because many of them failed to realise any observable return on investment. This problem became more obvious this year when OpenAI and Anthropic jacked up their prices:
Microsoft Bans Claude Code After AI Costs More Than The Humans It Replaced
— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) June 1, 2026
In other words, even if UK companies are hiring fewer graduates because of AI right now, that’s not necessarily a sustainable situation.
The other side to this story which is gaining attention is the following, as reported by the BBC:
Businesses have said employer national insurance and minimum wage hikes have made hiring more expensive, particularly for junior staff.
This is leading to coverage like the following:
Worst Graduate Jobs Market on Record: “This Is Exactly What Labour Were Warned About”
Vacancies for university leavers collapse by 45 per cent to the lowest level ever recorded…https://t.co/yCnO9i9BC1
— Conservative Post
(@ConsPost) August 24, 2026
Employers and right-wingers will seize on any opportunity to claim that paying people a fairer wage is a travesty. This isn’t to say well-meaning moves can’t have negative consequences, but it is certainly reason to be suspicious of how this data is being reported.
Big problems with AI
Regardless of whether it’s a 50% drop or less than that, and whether it’s due to AI, there are clearly problems in the job market. As ever, the right will tell you that the only solution is to abolish tax for the rich and to mandate in-work poverty for the rest of us. The battle is convincing the broader public it’s in their best interests for things to improve for them – not for our increasingly bloated 1%.
Featured image via Gatot Adriansyah (Canva Image Library)
By Willem Moore
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