About 75 per cent of new graduates had nursing jobs by March down on last year’s 85 per cent employment rate, according to the latest graduate survey.
It showed that at least 185 new nurses were still looking for a nursing job four months after graduation.
But it also showed that the number of new graduates finding jobs on new graduate programmes has risen strongly, the number heading overseas has declined, and the total number in work – about 900 – is the same as last year.
The annual snapshot of November graduate’s job destinations, coordinated by nurse educator group NETS, was responded to by 94 per cent of last November’s graduate cohort of 1209.
That bumper cohort was 15 per cent more than the previous year’s 1050 graduates but job numbers available to them stayed steady at around 900.
Cathy Andrew, a NETS survey spokeswoman, said for the first time in the survey it asked graduates without jobs whether they were actively looking for work as it was thought this was important data to be “capturing”.
It found that 185 graduates (15 per cent) were still actively looking for work, 44 (3.6 per cent) were not looking and the job status of 78 graduates who didn’t respond to the survey (6.4 per cent) was unknown.
Chief Nurse Jane O’Malley was unavailable for comment at time of going to press but Andrew, also head of CPIT’s nursing school, believed the 75 per cent employment rate was a “great result” given the current economic conditions.
The survey found that the number employed in new graduate programmes had grown from 637 last year (72 per cent of those nursing) to 744 (83 per cent) this year. The number of graduates heading overseas to work had also fallen from 53 (5 per cent) last year to 38 (3 per cent) in 2013.
The numbers employed in district health board medical or surgical roles was up (probably reflecting the rise in new graduate places) and the numbers in primary health care, mental health and continuing care/elderly were slightly down.
Outlook ‘good’
Meanwhile nursing is still rated as a good job prospect in the Department of Labour’s Occupational Outlooks for 2013.
The department rates 40 key occupations as “low, medium, or high” in the areas of student fees and potential income or “limited, fair, and good” in terms of job prospects.
Nursing job prospects are rated “good” compared to “medium” prospects for law and architecture graduates and “low” for journalists and firefighters.
Nursing student fees are ranked as high (an average of $16,000 to 18,000), which is the same ranking as given for doctors ($63,000) and dentists ($66,400).
When it comes to income, nurses are predicted to have “medium” income prospects, the same category given to architects, graphic designers, farm managers, police, and plumbers.
