IF YOU’RE in your final year at university and hoping to start a graduate job in the autumn, then Britain’s top employers have some good news for you. According to a report by the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), vacancies for university-leavers are expected to rise sharply this year, Martin Birchall writes.

The poll of 226 leading employers, conducted for the AGR by High Fliers Research during December and January, is the most optimistic assessment of the graduate employment market for more than five years. It shows that recruiters are set to hire 14.5 per cent more graduates than last year, making it the second consecutive recruitment season that employers have stepped up their graduate intake significantly.

Out of the 20 main industries and business sectors that AGR employers represent, 15 are expecting to increasing their vacancies with just four areas — law firms, the Armed Forces, oil companies, and the public sector — cutting back on numbers. One of the biggest growth areas is the accountancy and professional services sector. Graduate vacancies at the Big Four firms — Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers — have increased by two thirds, from 2,100 in 2003 to an estimated 3,400 this year, with many more opportunities at small and medium-sized firms. Recruitment is brisk in the City too, with a third more vacancies in areas such as investment banking and fund management.

JP Morgan is one of a number of major insitutions looking to take on extra graduates this year, as Helen Bostock, head of graduate marketing at the bank says: “We recruit between 200 and 300 graduates a year, and over the past year or so have seen increased vacancies in our sales and trading businesses as well as in the operations areas.”

The survey also shows that starting salaries are set to reach record levels. Employers are offering average starting salaries of £22,000 to those starting work this year.

This latest increase — 4.8 per cent year-on-year — is the highest annual rise recorded in the graduate market since 2001 and means that employers have increased initial salaries by well above the cost of living (currently 2.5 per cent) for three years running. There are still very big differences in the salaries offered by individual employers though. At the lower end of the scale, some organisations are still paying less than £15,000 to new graduates while the increased vacancy numbers this year mean that there are likely to be at least 500 additional graduate jobs with AGR employers paying salaries of £30,000 or more.

Despite the improving graduate market, the competition for jobs at all levels is likely to remain intense as more than 250,000 new graduates are due to leave university this year, chasing an estimated 90,000 graduate level positions.

Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the AGR, remains upbeat though: “The findings of our survey should bring a smile to the faces of final year students and recent graduates looking to enter graduate level employment this summer.”

Martin Birchall is survey director at High Fliers Research and editor of The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers

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