Graduates... take lower skilled jobs!

Students are being urged to take lower-skilled jobs or do voluntary work when they graduate this summer, after a poll of employers revealed widespread cuts in graduate recruitment. Vacancies for graduates in the City alone nose-dived 28% in the past year, the survey found. Leading companies from the banking, accountancy, construction and IT industries announced cuts to their graduate training positions for 2008, while across the board graduate pay has been frozen, the survey reported. In the worst hit industries starting salaries have been cut in an attempt to prevent further job losses.

Link to article

What impact do you think this information might have on those considering applying to university in the coming year?

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Immigration: How should we react?

An interesting article by Samuel Brittan in the FT. He focuses on the current debate about immigration, making an important distinction between asylum seekers and economic migrants. Some really good analysis of the good and bad aspects of immigration in the light of the likely net immigration of 20 million people into the UK over the next half century. He ends with the view that 'If a more restrictive policy towards economic migrants were the price of a more humane treatment of asylum seekers, it would be worth paying.'

Employers face shortage of skilled trades people

While the world pursues the knowledge economy, employers are increasingly desperate for plumbers, welders and other technical staff, U.S. employment services firm Manpower Inc said on Tuesday, in its annual survey of staff shortages. The survey of nearly 43,000 employers in 32 countries found the rising lament almost everywhere was for trades people and similar skilled, but not necessarily highly educated, positions. While Europe has fretted about the eastward expansion of the European Union and the potential for a flood of Polish plumbers and the like heading west, the survey found most Western European nations had the most acute shortages in such traditional crafts.

http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUST30198120080421

A2 Economists - Check this out alongside GeoffvRiley's excellent revision focus on 'Labour Market Failure'.