Further slowdown in graduate hiring anticipated amid economic uncertainty
Employer demand for Australian graduates continued to ease in 2024, according to a new analysis from Indeed, with further signs of cooling reported in early 2025.
Indeed's latest insights revealed that job postings for Australian graduates fell 24% last year, but remained 1.7 times higher than in 2019.
Signs of further easing have been recorded this year, as the first three months saw lower number of graduate job postings compared to the same period last year.
"While opportunities remain well above pre-pandemic levels, the market has clearly shifted, and recent graduates now face a more challenging recruitment environment than in prior years," said Callam Pickering, Indeed's senior economist, in the analysis.
"Geopolitical and economic uncertainty may also weigh on graduate recruitment over the remainder of this year, impacting Australian employers' confidence and ability to plan ahead."
Australia's electrical engineering sector indicated the strongest demand for graduates, as related job postings accounted for 5.2% of all its job ads in 2024.
Other industries with high demand for Australian graduates include:
But Pickering noted that not all graduate recruitment occurs online, such as the case in healthcare, where in-person placements are more common.
Graduate job postings also feature a mix of large-scale graduate programmes, where a single job posting may reflect dozens of jobs.
"The approach used in different sectors may influence how highly they rank compared to other sectors," Pickering said.
Meanwhile, the cooling demand for Australian graduates comes amid slower jobseeker activity, according to Indeed.
It found that only 0.4% of all jobseeker searches in 2024 were for graduate roles, unchanged from 2023, but down from 0.6% in 2022 and 0.8% in 2021.
Pickering said a potential reason behind this slowdown is due to the lack of friction in the graduate job market, which means graduates find jobs faster and therefore won't need to job search.
"A candidate who lands a graduate job in April will search less than a jobseeker who finds work in September," the economist said. "We, perhaps, have more of the former and fewer of the latter than was the case during and before the pandemic."
He also attributed it to the tight labour market, which may lead to fewer people pursuing entry-level roles, and may also lead to jobseekers potentially having more options.
This allows them to "bypass" traditional graduate pathways in favour of more lucrative opportunities.
But Pickering warned that further deterioration in graduate hiring may be expected, especially amid ongoing geopolitical and economic uncertainty.
"While Australia's job market remains tight — and it's important to remember that the graduate market is currently healthy — we shouldn't be surprised to see a deterioration in labour market conditions for recent university graduates," he added.
