- Britain’s leading graduate employers have reduced their recruitment targets for 2009 by 17 per cent since the latest graduate recruitment round began in September 2008.

- Graduate recruitment at the UK’s top employers did not increase by 11.8 per cent in 2008, as expected during the 2007-08 recruitment season. Instead, vacancies fell by 6.7 per cent, compared with graduate recruitment in 2007.

- Employers expect to hire almost 3,400 fewer graduates in 2009 than they had planned at the start of the recruitment season.

- The majority of employers plan to recruit graduates for finance-related roles – 62 per cent for jobs in finance and 24 per cent for positions in accountancy; 61 per cent plan to hire graduates for IT roles. Only 13 per cent of employers are advertising to fill media roles and 17 per cent consulting positions.

- Almost nine out of ten organisations are offering vacancies in London and almost half plan to hire new recruits for positions in the South East of England in 2009. About 55 per cent have jobs in the North West and 50 per cent have roles in the Midlands and Yorkshire. However, only 31 per cent had job vacancies in Northern Ireland.

- The sectors preparing to recruit the most graduates in 2009 are accountancy (20.9 per cent of total graduate jobs), the public sector (13.5 per cent of total) and the Armed Forces (12.8 per cent of total); the smallest graduate employers are chemicals and pharmaceuticals companies (0.6 per cent of total) and consumer goods companies (1.2 per cent of total).

- Employers are reasonably optimistic about graduate recruitment in 2010. A quarter expect to take on more new recruits next year and half expect to maintain recruitment at 2009 levels.

- Starting salaries at Britain’s leading graduate employers are due to rise by 5.9 per cent in 2009, taking average packages to £27,000 – a £1,500 increase on average salaries paid to new graduates in 2008. Salaries rose by 4.1 per cent in 2008.

- A quarter of top graduate programmes will pay new recruits more than £30,000. The most generous salaries are those on offer from investment banks (an average of £38,000), law firms (an average of £37,400) and management consulting firms (an average of £31,000).

- The three universities targeted most often by Britain’s leading graduate employers in 2008-09 are Manchester, London and Warwick.

- Two thirds of employers said that they had received more completed graduate job applications during the early part of the recruitment season than they had last year, but applications to investment banks and other City employers have dropped significantly.

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