The impact of COVID-19 restrictions on mid-career graduates

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected mid-career graduate workers’ economic position, reshaped their motivations and aspirations and impacted on their mental health.

New Nuffield-funded research from the University of Warwick’s Institute for Employment Research’s Futuretrack project captures the impact of the pandemic on a national sample of graduate workers in their early thirties, the majority of whom had by 2019 achieved reasonable job security, and many of whom were balancing work and parenting or other caring roles when the pandemic hit.

These graduates had faced a difficult start to their careers thanks to the 2008 recession, many reporting that this made them more resilient to the challenges of COVID. Their experience has implications for graduates now leaving higher education, and for policymakers and employers.

The report also highlights challenges and considerations for employers as they adapt working conditions and practices to the post-pandemic landscape.

Key findings

Experiences of the pandemic have reinforced existing inequalities in terms of access to secure and enjoyable employment.
The gender pay gap revealed in this study of mid-career graduates is unchanged from that shown in a study undertaken in 2002.
Working from home creates new potential for discrimination, particularly in access to training and promotion.
Graduates with confidence in their employer’s concern for the welfare of their staff coped better with the challenges of the pandemic.
These graduates had faced a difficult start to their careers thanks to the 2008 recession, many reporting that this made them more resilient to the challenges of COVID. Their experience has implications for graduates now leaving higher education, and for policymakers and employers.

Professor Kate Purcell said: “We wanted to find out how the participants in our long-running Futuretrack study saw their work change during the COVID-19 restrictions, and how the immediate economic impact on demand for products and services had affected their material circumstances, employment and financial security, and their career plans and wider aspirations.”

“We found that almost all of our participants experienced dramatic change in their working lives, whether they were furloughed, worked from home, or continued in frontline roles. Many participants working on-site reported ‘frontline fatigue’ while those working remotely often reported exhaustion caused by the breakdown of boundaries between work and non-work time and space, and the difficulties of managing these boundaries.

“Employers played a vital role in managing negative impacts: our participants reported that good communication and support led to increased commitment while the lack of communication and support led to a loss of trust in employers and trade unions.”

Commenting on the gender pay gap findings, Professor Peter Elias said: “We were surprised to discover that the gender pay gap for these mid-career graduates (the difference in average annual pay for between men and women) remains almost the same as the gap measured for similar national sample of mid-career graduates in 2002. We are urging employers to tackle the gender pay gap and take care to ensure that increased reliance on remote working doesn’t discriminate against certain categories of employee.”

Recommendations

The report concludes with recommendations to policymakers and employers in five priority areas intended to address not just the problems identified by the study but the probable future labour market issues that graduates will face. These are:

Extending gender pay gap reporting to smaller organisations.
Introducing rigorous procedures around flexible working.
Responding to the impact of the COVID-19 restrictions and requirements on employee welfare.
The need for more comprehensive and timely information about higher education outcomes.
Taking account of increasing fragmentation of jobs and employment precarity.

This study provides rich evidence about the experiences of mid-career graduates during the pandemic, including the financial and employer support they have received and how this has varied by sector, occupation, job stability and key worker status. “The report also sets out recommendations that could promote fairness and better support all employees, including extending gender pay gap reporting to smaller organisations and introducing rigorous procedures around flexible working arrangements.” Cheryl Lloyd, Education Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation