Whelp, grad salaries have actually gone DOWN over the last 20 years and it’s alarming

Guys, grad salaries have actually gone down in real terms by four per cent since 2001. This is scientific evidence that millennials do not understand our problems.

The government website says that grads of all ages are making an average of £40,000 right now. This sounds like a nice reassuring number. But if you calculate the “real terms” salaries by adjusting the numbers for inflation, then grad salaries have actually fallen quite drastically compared to the cost of living.

Grad salaries have dropped even further since the pandemic. The government’s website says the average graduate median real terms salary in 2023 is £26,000. In 2020, the median real terms salary for people five years after graduating was  £26,400. Yikes.

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Basically, grad salaries are just not rising as much as the cost of living is. Like, in 2001, a Freddo cost 10p and the average for a week’s rent was £80 per week. Now Freddos cost 30p (or more, if you’re silly enough to buy one at a service station or something) and the average rent is £306 a week. Like, rent in some cities has risen by as much as 100 per cent over the last four years alone. This is pretty alarming when, according to a new report by the Resolution Foundation, grads make four per cent less in real terms than they did 20 decades ago.

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Some generic grad jobs will pay you much less money than they used to. The Telegraph analysed a load of data from Indeed. Grads in lots of different industries are learning quite a bit less today in real terms than they did in 2017. Entry-level accountants are getting paid an alarming £3,397 less. Grads in administrative assistance earn £1,460 less. Scientific researchers are getting £1,510 less, and civil engineering grads make £1,502 less. Grads in sales, education, marketing, and mechanical engineering are also making quite a bit less money.

The minimum wage has gone up (yay!), but grad salaries haven’t risen by the same amount. You basically benefit much less from going to university now than you used to.

A helpful graph so you can see that the minimum wage has gone up, but grad salaries haven’t
(Credit: Resolution Foundation

Resolution Foundation worked out that 20 years ago, a uni grad would make about 2.5 times more money than a minimum wage worker. But now, the average grad gets 1.6 times more than a minimum wage salary. University is making a lot less financial sense.

Feautre image credit: Annabel Dowden