Higher education graduates with undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications report on outcomes after completing their education.
University graduate outcomes
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You can use this data to compare income, employment status and skill use for diverse groups with qualifications in STEM, non-STEM and health fields over time.
Source: Social Research Centre 2025
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The Social Research Centre carries out the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) Graduate Outcomes Survey.
Graduates of Australian higher education institutions take the graduate outcomes survey approximately 4 to 6 months after completing their courses. The data in this report is about domestic students only.
The survey gives information on labour market outcomes and graduates’ further study. The survey considers graduates employed for 35 hours or more per week (who are available for full-time work) to be employed full-time. ‘All employed graduates’, mentioned above, includes those employed in any capacity at the time of survey who are available for work.
The survey defines underemployment as graduates who were usually or actually in paid employment for fewer than 35 hours per week in the week before the survey, and who would prefer to work more hours.
Read more about our methodology.
Data insights
Skill use
In 2024, similar proportions of employed women and men STEM graduates felt they weren’t fully using their skills in their jobs. The largest difference between genders was in computing and information systems. In this field, 41% of employed men graduates felt they weren’t fully using their skills, compared to 34% of employed women graduates.
A smaller proportion of women STEM graduates in full-time employment felt they weren’t fully using their skills (32%) compared to all employed STEM graduates (48%). This suggests graduates who are employed on other arrangements, such as part-time, are more likely to feel they aren’t fully using their skills.
Compared to graduates from other broad fields of education, women STEM graduates were most likely to report their skills weren’t fully used in their job. Of women who had graduated from STEM qualifications (total STEM), 48% felt their skills weren’t fully used. Only 22% of total women graduates from health and 43% of total women graduates from non-STEM felt this way.
From 2023 to 2024, this feeling increased for employed women graduates in computing and information systems by 5 percentage points (29% to 34%). Other STEM fields also had a small increase, except for agriculture and environmental studies which decreased slightly:
- engineering (24% in 2023 compared to 25% in 2024)
- science and mathematics (58% in 2023 compared to 59% in 2024)
- agriculture and environmental studies (43% in 2023 compared to 42% in 2024).
A higher proportion of employed STEM graduates with disability reported their skills weren’t fully used in their job (51%), compared to STEM graduates without disability (43%). Other diversity groups had lower proportions. For STEM graduates in other diversity groups:
- 43% of CALD graduates reported this feeling, compared to 44% of non-CALD graduates
- 41% of graduates from a remote location reported this feeling, compared to 45% of those from a metropolitan location.
Income
Median full-time income for women STEM graduates increased in all undergraduate-level STEM fields from 2023 to 2024. The largest increase was in engineering, which grew from $75,000 in 2023 to $78,000 in 2024.
Median incomes for men graduates in STEM fields increased or stayed the same from 2023 to 2024.
In 2024 the median full-time income gaps between men and women undergraduates were larger for:
- science and mathematics, where the income gap between men and women undergraduates was $5,000
- engineering, where the income gap between men and women undergraduates was $2,000.
The income gaps between men and women STEM graduates were larger in the postgraduate coursework group. The gap between men and women STEM graduates at postgraduate coursework level in 2024 was largest for computing and information systems ($15,000).
From 2023 to 2024, the median full-time average income of STEM graduates at undergraduate level grew across all diversity groups, except for CALD graduates.
The largest growth in median full-time annual income was for graduates from STEM undergraduate qualifications from remote locations. Their income grew from $70,000 in 2023 to approximately $78,000 in 2024.
Part-time work and under-employment
In 2024, the proportion of women graduates employed part-time was higher than men in each of the STEM fields except for computing and information systems.
In every year since 2018, the proportion of women graduates employed part-time was equal to or higher than men in most of the STEM fields. The exceptions were engineering in 2020 and computing and information systems in 2018, 2019 and 2024.
The proportions of women STEM graduates employed part-time and seeking more hours increased for all STEM fields of study from 2023 to 2024. The largest increases were:
- science and mathematics increased from 22% in 2023 to 25% in 2024
- engineering increased from 5% in 2023 to 8% in 2024.
In 2024, a smaller proportion of STEM graduates from remote (23%) and regional (31%) locations were working part-time, compared to graduates from metropolitan locations (36%). Of graduates employed part-time from remote locations, only 9% were seeking more hours. In comparison, 13% of graduates from regional locations and 19% of graduates from metropolitan locations were seeking more hours.
A larger proportion of STEM graduates with disability were employed part-time (41%) than graduates without disability (33%). This was the same across all broad fields of education, with:
- 47% of graduates with disability employed part-time in non-STEM fields (compared to 37% of graduates without disability)
- 42% of graduates with disability employed part-time in health fields (compared to 39% of graduates without disability).
Gender equity in diversity groups
Among First Nations STEM graduates, a larger proportion of women with an undergraduate qualification were employed part-time (39%) compared to men (28%).
For CALD graduates of a STEM postgraduate research qualification, women earned less than men. The median full-time annual income of women in this cohort was approximately $94,000, while the median income of men was around $100,000. In 2023, the median income for women was $90,000 and $103,000 for men.
In 2024, a higher proportion of women CALD STEM graduates were working part-time (51%) than men (32%).
For STEM graduates from remote locations, an equal proportion of women and men graduates from an undergraduate STEM qualification were employed on a part-time basis in 2024 (23%). This is a large change from 2023, where 23% of women and only 10% of men STEM graduates from a remote location were employed part-time.