Graduate job vacancies in the UK fell to 8,383 in July, the lowest total recorded since Adzuna began tracking the market in 2016, according to the recruitment website's latest figures. The number marks a 45.6 per cent fall from the 15,397 vacancies advertised the same month last year.
Competition for the roles that remain has intensified too, with 2.14 jobseekers chasing every graduate vacancy in July, up from 1.93 a year earlier.
Jobs website Adzuna said it had 8,383 graduate vacancies listed in July, down from 15,397 at the same point last yearIt also found competition among job seekers across all levels is rising, with an average of 2.14 job seekers per vacancy in July, up from 1.93 a year earlier…
Andrew Hunter, Adzuna's co-founder, described the figures as 'a step backwards, not a blip'.
He said the annual decline in vacancies had worsened for the first time since January, and that the graduate market kept establishing new lows because employers had yet to find a reason to expand hiring at that level. The pattern varied sharply by region.
The south east of England was the only part of the UK with positive annual vacancy growth, up 0.65 per cent, while Scotland fell 21.4 per cent and Northern Ireland dropped 7.5 per cent. Pay growth also slowed, with the average advertised salary falling 0.73 per cent since May to £43,675 in July, though it remained 3.01 per cent higher than the same month last year.
Not every industry is retreating. Hunter said teaching, travel and trade and construction were still adding roles, with manufacturing now doing the same.
Elsewhere the picture is bleaker. According to Adzuna's figures, sectors including healthcare, nursing, hospitality and logistics posted fewer vacancies over the same period, leaving graduates outside the small group of growing industries facing tougher competition than three months ago.
This is rapidly developing into a national crisis- adding to the profound generational inequities which already bedevil Britain. Working class kids have long not had the support they needed as the mass employment industrial world disappeared. Will we repeat the mistake with…
The slowdown in graduate hiring is often framed as an AI story, but the picture from employers themselves is more mixed. A Deloitte UK survey of chief financial officers found that a 'wider business impetus for cost control' was the top reason cited for reduced graduate hiring, with a net balance of 64 per cent of CFOs expecting it to shrink recruitment.
AI and outsourcing followed as the next most significant dampeners, at net 47 per cent and net 33 per cent respectively. Cost pressure, not automation alone, currently ranks as the bigger factor in finance leaders' own accounts.
The vacancy squeeze lands as record numbers of school leavers head to university this autumn.
It follows separate figures from the Office for National Statistics showing 1,012,000 young people aged 16 to 24 were not in education, employment or training in the first quarter of 2026, an increase of 89,000 on the year.
For graduates entering the jobs market over the coming months, a shrinking pool of entry level roles combined with rising competition means longer job searches are increasingly likely, whatever the precise mix of causes behind the slowdown.
The debate over how much blame falls on AI, cost control or wider economic pressure will shape how policymakers and employers respond.
