UK Firms Eye Graduate Hiring Spree as Starting Salaries Stagnate

Young people in the UK are more likely to secure a job over the next year as a Incomes Data Services report claims that the country's companies plan to recruit more graduates as they are, effectively, cheap to hire.

The researcher revealed that employers are set to hire almost a fifth more graduates in 2014.

IDS explained that financial services firms are leading the hiring spree and plan to recruit 40% more graduates than the year before.

"Recruitment prospects for this year's crop of graduates look brighter than they have for a long while as the number of job opportunities is set to rise sharply," said Nasreem Rahman, assistant editor of IDS.

"Some sectors such as finance appear to be making up for lost time, aiming to recruit several times more graduates in 2014 than they did in 2013."

But IDS warned that the hiring surge has not translated into higher starting salaries for graduates.

The researcher found that a majority of companies froze their graduate starting salaries in 2013 and most have not hiked the remuneration packages for new starters in 2014.

The news comes after the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that there were more than 880,000 young people out of work in the UK in the three months to March.

This means that the UK's unemployment rate for 16 to 24 year olds was 19% over the same period.