6 graduate recruitment trends to watch in 2026
15th January 2026 I This article was originally published on Prospects Luminate. You can find it here.
2026 is here - but what does it have in store for the early careers and graduate recruitment market, I hear you cry. Here are my thoughts on the year ahead.
1. Graduate salaries will rise
After years of relative stagnation, I think this is the year we will see a notable, if moderate, increase in graduate starting salaries. Why? There are two big factors:
The minimum wage will increase in April 2026, for all adults over 21, to £24,784.50 pa, if you work 37.5 hours per week. [1]
Salary continues to be named as either the most important [2], or in the top three important factors, for students and graduates as they look for jobs, a shift that has emerged over the last two to three years.
These two factors will lead employers to review and, I believe, increase graduate salaries, as graduates rightly seek to see the value of their educational investment (often referred to in the press as the graduate premium [3]) reflected in salary differentials.
2. Visa changes will close doors for employers and international students alike
Employers want to recruit the very best talent for their business, regardless of where they come from. But they also have to do with this within the law. And two changes to policy in the coming year are going to make that much more difficult. The first is the reduction in the graduate visa from two years to 18 months [4], due to incept in January 2027. This 18-month period is shorter than most graduate schemes [5] (particularly as many don't start until the September following graduation) and so will not allow many employers to legally employ an international student on their graduate visa for the duration of the scheme.
Employers could make use of the skilled worker visa as an alternative route to the graduate visa, however, this is where the second big policy change also bites. With the new entrant rate for the skilled worker visa increased to a minimum of £33,400pa (with some caveats/special exceptions), many employers will not meet this salary threshold [6] and cannot justify paying international students more than their domestic counterparts.
Both changes combined are leading employers to the sad conclusion that they may have to stop accepting applications from international students. This started popping up in 2025, but expect to see a lot more of it on graduate recruitment websites and processes in 2026.
3. Hyper-localisation is the name of the game
In response to a volatile and complex global environment [7] (tariffs, legal and framework divergence, hardening immigration policy, political instability, war, supply chain disruption) employers are shifting away from global early careers strategies and back to localised ones. Employers need people in country who know and operate within their local laws, market and demographics.
Simultaneously the graduate population is less geographically mobile than we think (with 56% to 89% [8]) of graduates, depending on the region, working in the same region as their home address), due to the cost of living but also due to factors such as work-life balance and mental health. This is showing up for employers who run national attraction campaigns, who discover in the final stages of recruitment a mismatch between graduate location preferences and business demand in different locations.
So, if employers need graduates who want to live, work and stay in Newcastle - their strategy needs to be hyper localised to that location. Expect to see many more employers taking place-based approaches to both their attraction and recruitment strategies this year, as well as more regional and place-based collaborations between universities and their local employers.
4. Hiring numbers will stay about the same as 2025, despite a moderate economic downturn.
I am expecting the AI investor bubble to burst in 2026 [9]. This will no doubt have economic consequences globally, akin to the dot.com bubble bursting in the early 2000s (less acute in scale and severity than the financial crisis in 2008/09). However, interest rates and inflation both continue to fall, which suggests we may yet avoid recession. Given we already experienced a fall of 7% in graduate vacancies in 2025, I am predicting hiring numbers will stay stable (rather than any further decline) between last year and this, despite the sluggish economy.
This is primarily based on my instinct that professional services sectors will be increasing hiring moderately, after taking a lighter touch approach in 2025 to respond to AI and what this means for the future of their hiring. Alongside this demand for engineers will remain high, as will roles in areas like utilities, construction and defence (as hopefully the government starts to turn policies of 2025 into action in 2026).
5. Work-readiness and work experience is where it is at.
Alan Milburn (former Labour MP now leading a UK government review into the rising number of young people Not in Education, Employment, or Training), kicked off the New Year with a provocative interview in The Times [10]. He stated the decline of the 'Saturday job' means young people are no longer prepared for the workplace. He described the current situation as a 'national outrage' and an 'economic catastrophe', warning that a 'lost generation' could result if the trend is not reversed.
Meanwhile only about half (49%) of Institute for Student Employers members strongly agreed or agreed that graduates were career ready at the point of hire, a decrease from 54% in 2023. But this isn't just a graduate issue. It appears to be a generational one, with only 25% of employers strongly agreeing or agreeing that school and college leavers were ready at the point of hire, down from 39% in 2023.
This shift from student life to employee life never appears to have been bigger [11]. With this in mind, expect employers and universities to be offering more work readiness (or work related) support, AI-simulated and digital 'work experiences' to help solve the problem at scale. Costs, and barriers to social mobility, mean they are highly unlikely to suddenly increase paid face to face work experiences, internships or placements however, so these will remain in high demand.
6. Human-centred approaches will win
All of that said, I wanted to return to a prediction I made in 2025 - a return to more human-centred engagement and attraction. In person, on campus, adding value and connecting with real people is what we started to see employers doing more of last year. Distancing themselves from AI, chatbots and all the digital noise. And businesses, like Deloitte [12], who did this last year stood out and 'won' with students, careers teams and critically their business stakeholders. And I'm all here for the human revolution! I am looking forward to seeing much more of it in 2026.
Of course, not all of my predictions will turn out to be correct, but I hope they are helpful and instructive to your own thinking as you plan for your year ahead.