The Degrees Most in Demand by UK Employers

In-Demand Degrees

In collaboration with the recruitment experts at Check-a-Salary, money.co.uk has analysed over 1 million job adverts between 2019 and 2020 to reveal the most prospective higher education qualifications and how the coronavirus has gone on to affect vacancies.

Their research found that 77,000 job vacancies listed an engineering degree in its job specification during 2020, making it the most in-demand degree in the UK.

Following in second was a degree in business at 40,000, then Management with over 32,500 requests, followed by Design and Marketing with over 15,000.

The STEM subjects also showed to be in demand, with qualifications in computer engineering and computer science particularly sought after.

Danny Aldridge, Co-Founder of Check-a-Salary said: "The increase in demand for IT and Mathematical related degrees emphasises the importance of the sector to the UK.

"The varying levels of pay depending on degree highlights to school leavers the significance they need to place on their degree choice.

"Studying a STEM subject is likely to lead to higher levels of pay throughout a career."

When looking at how the pandemic affected in-demand degrees and vacancies, Money.co.uk saw a 34% drop in the number of job vacancies requiring a degree in comparison to their earlier figure in 2019.

And although Engineering came in top in 2020, the sector still saw a drop of 25% for vacancies requesting a degree compared to 2019.

However, Computer Information Systems and Computer Systems Engineering degrees saw a 2636% and 3067% increase in demand year-on-year.

While Information Systems, Computer Systems and Data Science degrees also continued to increase.

The degrees which fell the most were Petroleum Engineering and Aerospace Systems, while unsurprisingly so did the demand for Hospitality Business Management degrees with a 97% fall.

Interestingly, the data also shows a 57% drop in demand for Nursing degrees in 2020 in comparison to the previous year but did show a big demand increase for qualified midwives in 2020.

 

Other Interesting Findings:

The research also analysed how many of the job adverts that demanded a degree listed the salary offer, to find only 17% did.

The percentage of job adverts requiring engineering, data and computer science degrees were more likely than others to list the salary.

Amongst the top 25 in-demand degrees, the research found that only 9% of roles requiring a finance degree and 10% requiring an accounting degree listed the salary within the job specification.

To read the full findings, click here.