Degrees of demand: a task-based analysis of the British graduate labour market

Abstract

Abstract This study investigates the evolving demand for graduate skills in the British workforce, leveraging a task-based approach with data from the Skills and Employment Survey Series. Focused on the changing importance of job tasks related to graduate skills, the research explores the mapping of these tasks to educational attainment, discerns the price employers pay for tasks requiring graduate skills, and addresses regional variation in graduate supply and demand. Despite a slowing growth of graduate skills requirements post-2006, we find a stable assignment of graduate education with job tasks and an overall flat task price related to graduate skills requirements. We present regional evidence showing education expansion rather than exogenous factors drove high-skills demand, balancing the development of supply and demand in the British graduate labour market over 1997–2017.