Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to her Department's statistics entitled Graduate labour market statistics, published on 5 June 2025, what assessment she has made of the potential implications for her policies of the rate of improvement in high-skilled employment among graduates aged 21-30.

The department publishes the ‘Graduate Labour Market Statistics’, which provides statistics on employment and earnings outcomes for post-graduates, graduates and non-graduates. The publication includes estimates for high-skilled employment for graduates aged 21-30 years. In 2024, 60.1% of young graduates (age 21-30) were in high-skilled employment, a 0.1 percentage point increase on 2023 at 60.0%. This data was published on 5 June 2025, and is available here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/graduate-labour-markets/2024.

Higher education (HE) should be a pathway to opportunity for all students. Students and taxpayers deserve a good return on their significant investment in HE, and our economy needs graduates to go on to highly skilled and well-paid employment. We are supporting the Office for Students to implement a new expanded quality system that will include a specific focus on the needs and benefits of HE to employers.

We published our Post-16 Education and Skills White Paper on 20 October 2025, which sets out our reforms to the skills system to support the development of the skilled workforce our economy needs, delivering on our Plan for Change and driving national renewal.