University graduates want starting salaries 25% higher than national average

Figure was 9 per cent higher than when young people were polled earlier in year

University graduates now expect higher salaries than they did earlier in the year, poll finds (PA)

University graduates want to see a starting salary of £30,000 in their first jobs, according to a new survey.

This is several thousand higher than the average starting salary for recent graduates, which is estimated at between £24,000 and £27,000.

A new poll from a careers platform found young people expect their first salaries after university to be more than £30,000.

This was 9 per cent higher than when Bright Network asked at the start of the year.

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It comes as the cost of living crisis continues to bite, with wages failing to keep up with soaring inflation.

Around 80 per cent of young people have changed how they think about starting salaries as a result of the crisis, according to Bright Network survey.

A similar percentage said they wanted a “side hustle” to make extra money on top of their full-time job, the poll of 4,000 respondents found.

Alex Johnson, a final year student at the University of Leeds, said he is earning extra cash by running a blog about Lego. He told Sky News he plans to continue once he gets a graduate job.

“It will just help me boost that income since unfortunately it’s a struggle to find those good salaries out there,” he said.

Wages have been falling in real terms in the cost of living crisis as wages rise at a slower rate than inflation. According to the last estimates, total pay including bonuses dropped by 3.6 per cent when taking inflation into account.

Alison Edgar, an adviser to small and big businesses, said she did not believe a £30,000 starting salary was feasible for new graduates.

“Twenty-five per cent on top of current salaries doesn’t fit into the current economics,” she told Sky News. “A lot of graduates are new to the workplace, so they’ll need training and understand the business side of things.

“If they get that increase you’d have to increase the salaries of all the employees that were and that is not going to work for businesses economically. It’s not a sustainable model.”