Unsurprisingly, just over a third of all graduates ended up working in South East England and 21% went to jobs in London, although many were concentrated in the City of London and Westminster, a very small geographic area, whereas under 7% took up jobs in North East England and Northern Ireland.
But a look at destinations broken down by career sector showed up some other happy hunting grounds for graduates looking for jobs outside the centre of London:
- Marketing graduates also found work in the London Borough of Camden, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Oxfordshire and Manchester.
- Science graduates were most likely to start work in Oxfordshire or Cambridgeshire but Merseyside, Surrey, Norfolk and Aberdeen (also the main centre for oil and gas engineering) were popular destinations.
- Outside London, Surrey, Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Hertfordshire, Belfast and Tyne and Wear took on IT graduates in considerable numbers.
- Similarly, graduates in Art and Design subjects also found opportunities in Merseyside, Hertfordshire, Surrey, Manchester, Kent, Glasgow and Edfinburgh.
Of course, many career areas (e.g. retail management, energy, public sector jobs) offer a wider geographic spread of opportunities but the overall message is that graduates in less affluent parts of the country will struggle to find graduate jobs locally - and of course none of the areas mentioned fall within Cumbria or North Lancashire.
Incidentally, you can find an online version of "What Do Graduates Do?" 2012 on the HECSU website
