Unemployment is rising for Media, Journalism, and Communications graduates, here’s how to prepare for a tougher job market.
A 2023 Sports Journalism graduate reflects on his post-university job search and offers advice today’s students need as they enter an increasingly unpredictable industry.
According to the latest Graduate Outcomes data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), unemployment among Media, Journalism, and Communications graduates is rising once again. For today’s students, this matters: the job market remains highly competitive, with 59.3% of graduates who completed their studies during the pandemic reporting that COVID-19 negatively affected their employment prospects.
The Graduate Outcomes 15-month survey reveals how recent cohorts compare with those from five years ago and how these subjects perform against other fields. But statistics only tell part of the story. To put this into real-world context, this article hears from Ellis Stevens, a 2023 Sports Journalism graduate who navigated the job market first-hand. Ellis shares what the search was really like, and offers practical, honest advice to help Hybrid readers prepare for an industry still adapting to rapid and significant change.
Ellis Stevens, who graduated from the University of Brighton in 2023, experienced the full force of the pandemic on graduate employment directly as he began his job search. He now works in freelance journalism, writing football news and features for outlets including Sports Mole and Bet9ja, but this progress followed a difficult and often discouraging first few months after university.
Ellis began applying for positions as soon as he graduated university and eventually landed his first role in September 2023. Like many graduates in his field, his initial goal was a staff role in sports media, but a saturated market and limited opportunities soon forced him to widen his search.
“I initially applied for sports journalism positions… but I eventually branched out into generalised journalism roles as the job search went on.”
The biggest barrier, he recalled, was the level of experience required. Many so-called ‘entry-level’ roles required at least a year of industry experience, while positions that didn’t often turned out to be unpaid - adding financial pressure to an already stressful situation.
“The whole experience became progressively more demoralising, leaving me feeling as though I would ultimately have to settle for a job completely unrelated to the degree I had worked so hard to achieve.”
Still, Ellis persisted in his pursuit of sports journalism. Pivoting into freelancing gave him his first break and eventually led to steady journalism work.
Crucially, Ellis stressed that his experience wasn’t unique.
“Most of my fellow students also had difficulties securing their first job after graduating.”
Ellis isn’t alone, and the data confirms it.
When we look at longer-term trends in the Graduate Outcomes dataset, a clear picture emerges, showing his experience as part of a wider pattern of rising unemployment.
The latest Graduate Outcomes figures show that, following several years of decline, unemployment among Media, Journalism, and Communications graduates has begun to rise again. The largest increase was with the most recent reported upon cohort, reversing a steady fall recorded between 2017/18 and 2020/21. This five-year trend is highly significant, as unemployment is gaining momentum within this sector, mirroring the global post-pandemic recovery. Visualisation 1 illustrates this pattern clearly, highlighting a downward slope up to 2020/21, followed by a gradual but consistent rise:
As Visualisation 1 demonstrates, unemployment fell steadily between 2017/18 and 2020/21, reaching its lowest point during the pandemic period, before climbing again in the latest cohort. While unemployment reached its lowest point in 2020/2021, this coincided with an unstable period of the industry due to the pandemic, creating long-lasting impacts for the later cohorts in the study.
These figures derive from the HESA Graduate Outcomes survey, which contacts graduates 15 months after they finish their course to ask what they are doing now. The survey captures work, further study and unemployment once graduates have had time to enter the labour market, providing a more stable picture than immediate post-graduation surveys. Research from the Reuters Institute for Journalism found that UK audiences have significantly less interest in traditional news sources over the past decade; 70% reported having strong interest in 2015, compared with just 38% in 2024. This decline may also help explain why graduate unemployment in journalism-related subjects has begun to rise again. Ultimately, the data supports Ellis’ experience, illustrating the challenge that recent Media, Journalism, and Communications graduates face to make their first break into the industry.
To understand whether Media and Journalism graduates are uniquely affected, Visualisation 2 compares unemployment across subject groups:
The chart demonstrates while Media, Journalism, and Communications graduates face a steeper unemployment level, they aren’t at the top of the chart. Business and Management graduates experience even higher levels of unemployment, suggesting a wider economic struggle for non-vocational degrees. However, Media, Journalism, and Communications still perform significantly worse than vocational pathways such as Medicine, Dentistry, and Education, which tend to offer more stable employment routes. Despite a competitive labour market, Engineering and Technology still outperforms Media, Journalism, and Communications. Overall, the data highlights that while the wider labour market conditions play a part, the media sector is experiencing additional pressures that make graduate entry more challenging.
In addition to the data, there have been several industry shifts that further explain why Media, Journalism and Communications graduates face more challenging employment prospects than many other subject groups. A significant factor is the restructuring taking place across the media landscape, with the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) also acknowledging the decline in public news interest over the previous decade. They report on the impact of this change causing funding and newsroom cuts, audience decline, and digital platform transformation. With this comes new training and skills expectations for graduates, including social video, digital editing and data-led storytelling, creating harsh competition for fewer early-career roles.
It was also found that the wider creative industries have also been the slowest to recover from the pandemic, with arts & humanities graduates being the least likely to be employed full-time. This can contribute to an overcrowded job market for graduates that is harder to navigate.
The NCTJ further noted how, like Ellis, a growing number of qualified journalists are turning to working freelance as media outlets streamline their teams. There has been a rise in flexible and temporary work throughout the sector, adding to the barriers for graduates compared with those studying vocational subjects.
Despite the valuable insights outlined in the Graduate Outcomes survey, several limitations affect how precisely the data should be interpreted. As with any survey, inconsistencies or gaps may occur in the data; higher education was largely disrupted by the pandemic meaning some students were awarded later than usual, potentially preventing them from being included in the survey population. The dataset also neglects the complexity of media work, with freelance income, blended roles, and self-employment being harder to define. Consequently, these figures do not reflect the full scope of opportunities available in the sector.
Ellis’s experience, alongside the Graduate Outcomes data, shows that Media, Journalism and Communications graduates are entering a competitive and dynamic labour market. Reduced staff roles and increasing reliance on freelance work make securing your first role challenging - but not impossible. Ellis’s journey demonstrates that persistence and early experience-building remain key.
“Put yourself forward for as many opportunities as you can - whether freelance, paid or even unpaid work - because you never know which one will become a turning point in your career.”
For students preparing to enter the industry, there’s no better time to focus on creating a strong multimedia portfolio that demonstrates versatility across formats. Networking with professionals through industry events or university open days can also help create pathways into work. Keeping options open, including the possibility of freelance or hybrid roles, can broaden your entry points. And while the sector can feel oversaturated, it is also continuing to evolve. New digital formats, audience behaviours, and content platforms are creating opportunities for graduates who are adaptable, proactive and genuinely committed to the field. The landscape may be competitive, but it is far from closed.
Really solid piece combining data with lived experience. The point about entry-level roles requiring experience is such a catch-22 that nobody talks about enough. When I was trying to break into tech writing a few years back, I hit the exact same wall and ended up taking unpaid gigs just to build a porfolio. What's interesting is how freelance work is becomming the default entry point rather than the backup plan, which totally reshapes career trajectories.