More experts are warning that graduate jobs will be cut because of Brexit

Before the EU referendum, we were warned that Brexit would have damaging effects on our generation’s prospects, and it looks like that’s happening sooner rather than later.

Because of instability in financial markets, graduate employers are set to take on fewer university leavers than the year before. After the financial crash in 2008, graduate recruitment dropped by 25%, and experts are saying it’s likely a similar drop off will happen again.

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Recruitment manager James Phillips explained: ‘One of the first things companies do during market uncertainty is to introduce a hiring freeze. Companies are being particularly cautious with their hiring plans as a result of Brexit.’

Finance and business are the two sectors where placement numbers will be hardest hit. James Hick, managing director of the jobs company Manpower Group, says: ‘It is very likely that we will see a significant reduction in the number of graduate hires across the professional services and investment banking sectors post-Brexit… For those graduates hoping to enter these already very competitive sectors, job opportunities in the short uncertain term have become much harder’.

Graduate recruitment for retail companies will also be affected by the referendum result. Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Morrisons have all declined to comment on whether or not they will be decreasing the number of offers they make to grads, claiming ‘it is too early to say’ whether any changes will be made.

This news is especially hard to take because the number of graduates getting hired had grown for the last three years in a row, and according to High Fliers research, Times Top 100 Graduate Employers had planned to expand recruitment by 7.5% in 2016.

However, that trend looks like it’s over because of Brexit. Bardia Sohi, a recruitment agency finance director, said that ‘2015-16 graduate opportunities had been growing’ but he ‘cannot see that continuing’ in the immediate future.

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