Graduates: From a top degree to the bottom rung: Sarah Strickland studies the jobs crisis driving graduates to despair

LAST year Susan Siertsema graduated with an upper second degree, eager to hit the job market. More than a year later she is still unemployed.

When she began her degree in business office systems management at Humberside Polytechnic, her tutor had a file bulging with letters from companies wishing to employ graduates straight off the course. 'By the time I left, the file was empty,' she says.

Ms Siertsema has written more than 150 letters in her search for employment, which began in her final year. Her CV, she says, has been 'ripped apart and put back together again' by countless careers advisers. She has had only four job interviews.

When she left the polytechnic, she returned to Wales to live at home and look for work. After six months on the dole, with sporadic temporary jobs, she moved to Brighton, where her sister lived, hoping opportunities would be better in the south of England. But all she could find was clerical and bar work.

Finally she responded to an advert promising a 'fantastic role for graduates with great managerial potential' in a publishing house in London. An interview followed and she got the job - earning pounds 9,000 per year - but was bitterly disappointed. It was a job selling advertising space. All the employees were graduates like her, desperate for employment, but who usually left after a few weeks feeling disillusioned and exploited.

Since quitting that job she has been available for two months and has had just three days' work. 'I can't even get bar work at the moment. When I started my degree everyone was getting jobs, no problem; now it's tempting to wonder what it was all for. My parents are still having to subsidise me. I'm in the library every morning with the pensioners, scouring the papers.

'I have been out there for 12 months and got up each time I have been knocked back. New graduates won't know what it's like hearing the rejection letters hitting the mat every morning. It's very demoralising, but you have to keep trying.'

Ms Siertsema's story is a common one. Employment prospects for graduates are at their worst since 1983, with one in 10 still looking for a job six months after graduating. According to a recent survey by the Institute of Manpower Studies at Sussex University, employers have 17 per cent fewer vacancies for graduates this year. Salaries, too, are marginally down in real terms, to pounds 12,500 for non-industrial posts.

The number of posts advertised in Current Vacancies, a leading graduate jobs magazine, plummeted from 15,272 in 1990 to 3,528 this year. Many heavy recruiters are cutting back.

Touche Ross, the accountancy firm, reduced its graduate intake from 500 to about 370 in 1990 and has not increased it since. At the National Westminster Bank, the intake fell from 264 in 1990 to 180 this year. The Prudential offered 11 graduate posts this year against 48 in 1990 - and it received 3,142 applications by the end of June.

J Sainsbury had more than 6,000 applications for 80 places - it usually offers between 100-150 posts. General Accident, which usually takes on between six and 10 graduates, now takes none; and Marks & Spencer had to defer the intake of 100 graduates from last year to this year.

Companies are dropping out of careers fairs in droves - the number of firms attending fairs fell from 1,611 in 1990 to 580 this year. Georgina Molver, graduate recruitment officer at the Prudential, says the company cancelled a booking for a major fair last autumn and has not attended any since. 'It's wrong to promote ourselves and give people false hopes when we are already getting an enormous amount of applications for fewer vacancies. We couldn't justify the expense, either.'

The dearth of jobs is not helped by the fact that more graduates than ever are competing for jobs. The number of students graduating has risen steeply over the last five years to a record 143,000 this year, an increase of 6.3 per cent over 1991. The numbers are expected to rise further. Unemployment among graduates has been increasing steadily, with some peaks and troughs, since 1965. In 1970, graduate starting salaries fell below average earnings for the first time and stayed there.

Before the mid-Sixties, having a degree virtually guaranteed a career. Geoff Pike, research fellow at the Institute of Manpower Studies, says graduates have found it steadily more difficult since then. 'As more and more graduates enter the market, the value of a degree declines. It becomes a less scarce commodity,' he says. In 1960 there were about 35,000 new graduates a year, less than a quarter of today's figure.

Graduates are taking jobs that would previously have been done by school-leavers. 'There's a sort of filtering down process in the graduate market. Before, you could have entered accountancy though A-levels, perhaps also the law, or pursued a personnel management course without a degree. Now, entrance into the bottom rung depends more on a degree. Whereas once a degree was almost a meal ticket, now it has become more a necessity than a luxury.' The more graduates there are, the less valuable a degree becomes, yet the more vital it is to have one in order to compete.

Tom Frank, chair of the Association of Graduate Recruiters and a careers adviser at Birmingham University, agrees. 'A lot of professions have become all-graduate, such as accountancy, law and teaching. Many jobs in industry and commerce are now predominantly graduate, whereas in the Sixties those jobs simply weren't. No graduate would have gone into selling, and anyone going into banking now has a pretty hard time if they aren't a graduate.

'Anyone capable of benefiting from higher education is still significantly better off with than without a degree - you won't get very far without one today.'

Students should not despair, however. Nigel Llewellyn, national recruitment partner at Touche Ross, says: 'Many students have reacted too despondently. They are convinced there are absolutely no jobs available at all. But we are still offering 370 real jobs, we are not just going through the process.'

Brian Steptoe, head of the University of London Careers Advisory Service, advises graduates still looking for work to make sure they are not chasing rainbows. 'As a graduate you have not got a golden key that is going to unlock a golden door,' he said. 'Widen your horizons and go for almost any job, as well as the one you want. Anything is better than staying at home and being unemployed.'

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