Backbreaking shifts spent on hospital rotations as a junior doctor; learning to command the respect of teenagers as a trainee teacher; deciding whether to remove vulnerable children from their family as a new social worker.

The challenges of work in the public sector have long been a draw for those leaving university, with half of all UK graduates choosing to go into public service professions.

Despite graduate unemployment reaching 7.9 per cent, a level not seen since 1996, graduate recruitment in the public sector has remained buoyant through the recession, according to research due to be published on Monday.

In 2008 the number of graduates entering healthcare, teaching and social work increased significantly, according to What Do Graduates Do? a survey of 220,065 graduates who left university in 2008 by the Higher Education Careers Services Unit (Hecsu), a research charity.

Social work received the biggest boost to its ranks with the number of social workers rising by 55 per cent since 2007 to more than 2,500, thanks to the first cohort of graduates to attain a degree in social work.

The number of secondary school teachers increased by 14 per cent from 1,850 to 2,110 in 2008 while healthcare also saw its numbers lifted by recruits as the number of graduates working as medical practitioners or pre-registration house officers rose from 4,430 in 2007 to 5,100 in 2008, a rise of 15 per cent.

Charlie Ball, the deputy research director of Hecsu, said that graduates who would normally have gone into commercial roles had been attracted to what they perceived as more secure jobs in the public sector during the recession.

Yet with a squeeze on government spending set to affect the public sector in coming years, this trend is unlikely to continue, Mr Ball said. “As the economy recovers in 2010 we will see a reduction in people going into public sector roles,” he said.

While frontline jobs such as teaching and nursing are unlikely to be affected, fewer entry-level jobs will be available in local and central government, Mr Ball predicted.

He said: “In the past ten years the public sector has had unprecedented access to talent. It will need to do its best to keep hold of that talent in the coming years.”

Mr Ball’s view is supported by research published today by the Centre for Cities, a think-tank, which found that opportunities for graduates in the public sector will dwindle in coming years.

It said that in the past decade the public sector has driven the growth in new jobs — 69 per cent of the 1.2 million jobs created between 1998 and 2007 were in the public sector.

With up to 290,000 public sector positions forecast to be lost across the UK by 2014, cities will suffer high numbers of unemployed young people unless more jobs can be generated in the private sector, the think-tank cautions.

“The public sector will not drive graduate job growth over the next decade,” said Dermot Finch, chief executive of the Centre for Cities.

“This means more private sector job opportunities will be needed to bridge the gap.”

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