Manchester is recognised as a central hub for student life and development, with an estimate of over 100,000 students in the city each year, and henceforth pushing out over 30,000 graduates every summer (Manchester City Council, 2021). In light of this, the city itself has thrived with campus development and its commitment to maintaining a modern city for young people, with Manchester Metropolitan University ranking 7th for student experience in 2025 (MMU, 2025).
But how does the city hold up for post-graduates in search of job prospects?
Being recognised as the media hub of the north after the addition of Media City in 2011, along with progressions in law, finance and tech, Manchester situates itself as a city dedicated to modernity and advancement, something that can be utilised by the influx of graduates produced each year. Compared to its neighbouring cities, Manchester is renowned for the bustling ‘London of the North’ atmosphere, attracting migration from all over the country to live and work in the city, in turn aiding the development of broader job sectors. With this brought an influx of entry-level positions suited to graduates and newcomers. Current statistics from NewGrads show Manchester as having 411 jobs open for recruitment, exponentially higher than other northern cities, with 240 in Leeds, 90 in Newcastle, 74 in Liverpool, and only 59 in Sheffield (NewGrads, 2026). With the city advertising the highest levels of open roles in the north at 411, it already reigns 71% higher than the second-placed Leeds at 240, which in turn attracts graduate migration from other northern cities, as well as the expected cost-of-living migration from the south.
Whilst the high number of vacancies reigns promising for post-grads looking for work, complications arise at the ever-expanding pool of applicants seeking the same roles. The large market, combined with the wider sector opportunities, draws in an influx of applicants, and in turn forms an oversaturated application market. We can see this reflected in the ISE 2025 recruitment survey, which depicted an average 38 applications per graduate vacancy in 2002/3, which then rose steadily to 86 in 2022/3, an expected growth over a 20-year period. However, it is estimated that in 2025, it had already grown to 140 applications per vacancy per graduate role, with as high as 290 in competitive sectors such as retail (ISE, 2025). Whilst we can observe a clear decline in the success rate of job applications across the country, it is crucial to measure this across Manchester as it has become one of the most popular student cities, drawing in more and more students each year. Nigel Barlow found in February of this year that the number of people being hired today sits only marginally above the pandemic-era lows, with an exponential 2.7 times increase in applications per vacancy in the last two years. Amongst this, vacancies for university leavers are down 45% from the previous year (Barlow, 2026).
We can place Manchester as a site of struggle for new graduates trying to enter the workforce, reflective in their experiences coming out of university into an oversaturated field of limited jobs. Many report settling for “working in low-pay jobs they are vastly overqualified for, and often only part-time”, which they describe as feeling “ridiculous, exhausting, humiliating and demoralising” (The Guardian, 2025). One 29-year-old from Manchester who graduated with a master’s degree in medical microbiology at 23 described his experience applying for entry-level jobs after university, explaining that “(t)hese are band 2 entry level positions, offering less money than I make at the pub. They only require GCSEs or A-levels to apply and I have two degrees. I tick absolutely every box on the job descriptions. You have to assume it is so competitive that they’re automatically filtering out many applications because of the sheer volume. Or is there some rubbish AI sifting through these applications that keeps spitting mine out?”. This has remained a concern for many graduates, where the only possible working opportunities are in sectors vastly different from their specialism, often minimum wage retail and hospitality positions.
Although the market has become completely overwhelmed with applicants despite the declining job opportunities available, many young people struggle with the instability and opaque process of job seeking, where the sheer volume of rejection with no explanation has become unbearable, and henceforth their hard-earned qualifications lose value the longer they spend out of education or on the career ladder. Whilst it remains true that Manchester offers more routes into a career than its neighbouring cities, the scale of applicants fighting for an ever-shrinking range of jobs poses the question not of whether these jobs exist, but who has the destiny to secure them.
