17-07-2025
Junior doctors and dentists earn £10,000 more than other graduates
Medicine and dentistry graduates earn nearly £10,000 more than the average university leaver after 15 months, figures show.
The average salary for those in full-time paid employment who graduated in 2023 was £28,500, up from £27,500 the year before.
Science graduates had an average salary of £29,500, according to the Higher Education Statistics Agency (Hesa).
The annual survey named medicine and dentistry as the most lucrative degree subjects. Graduates in those fields recorded the highest average salary, at £37,900.
The lowest was for graduates from media, journalism and communication subjects, at almost £25,000.
Fewer new graduates are in full-time employment or full-time further study than the year before, the figures show. Slightly more are unemployed than in the previous year's cohort.
Female graduates were less likely to be unemployed than male graduates but more likely to be in part-time employment. Among graduates in full-time employment, more men than women reported earning salaries over £33,000.
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Overall, 59 per cent of graduates from 2023 were in full-time employment 15 months after leaving, compared with 61 per cent in 2022 and 2021, but higher than the years immediately pre-pandemic.
Five per cent were in full-time further study, down from 6 per cent the year before. Six per cent of graduates were unemployed, up from 5 per cent the year before.
Similar numbers in both years were travelling, caring for someone, retired, doing voluntary work or working part-time.
Of British graduates working in the UK, 76 per cent were in high-skilled jobs (82 per cent of science graduates and 72 per cent of others).
This ranged from 97 per cent of medicine and dentistry graduates to 49 per cent of those who had studied agriculture or food-related courses.
Ten per cent of all employed graduates were in low-skilled work and another 5 per cent in elementary occupations, those involving simple and routine tasks. A further six per cent were engaged in administrative or secretarial jobs and 5 per cent in sales and customer service.
Most respondents felt their current 'activity' was meaningful and 74 per cent said it fitted with their future plans. Only 65 per cent said that they were using what they had learnt during their studies.
More than 358,045 graduates provided usable responses to the agency for its annual graduate outcomes survey.
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Charlie Ball, head of labour market intelligence at the Jisc, which provides technology advice to universities, said: 'Since 2022, the job market has been flat. There's a small trough at the end of 2024, around the time this graduate cohort was surveyed. So we'd expect the outcomes to be slightly, but not inordinately, worse than the last cohort.'
Eighty-eight per cent of graduates were in work or study, down from 89 per cent the previous year and 90 per cent in 2021, which Ball described as 'disappointing but not a sign of a significant labour market downturn'.
He added: 'You would expect a slight rise in postgraduate study rates. This is generally counter-cyclical, in that it goes up as the graduate labour market dips. This doesn't seem to have really happened this time around, possibly because graduates don't themselves perceive the jobs market to have got notably worse.'
Medicine and dentistry £37,924
Veterinary science £33,750
Engineering and technology £31,975
Mathematical sciences £31,450
Computing £30,998
Media, journalism and communications £24,925
Design, creative and performing arts £24,993
Psychology £24,988
Law £25,305
Biological and sports science £25,988
