It's not coming home

26:28Despite our size, the amount played by player, we're 66th in the ranking. So although we might be in the top five in terms of scale, we're 66th at the moment in terms of how much individual players play. That was Andrea Vedler, Chief Executive of the National Lottery, who was speaking to Felicity Hanna on today's Big Boss podcast. and you can listen to the full interview online. Just search for Big Boss on BBC Sounds or wherever you get your part. This is summer at its peak. Whole Foods Market Summer Fruit Fest is your invitation to eat the season. Fresh, organic and bursting with flavor. Start your day with peaches and organic blueberries and yogurt.

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27:57Wake Up To Money from BBC Radio 5 Live. Morning, morning, morning. It is 5.34. If you have stayed tuned in to Wake Up To Money, thank you so much. If you've just tuned in, welcome, welcome, welcome. We have been talking about all things World Cup. We're going to be talking about that a little bit later in the show as well. Well, I know we had a text in. Some of us are relieved it's over. And you know what I was saying before, we've got Ian McAllister, Chief Executive of Man Commercial Protection. I was saying earlier that maybe it was easier, you know, not have the extra time, the penalties, all that sort of stuff.

28:31Maybe that was better than, you know, a quick death, so to speak. Yeah, well, losing on penalties is not the best, is it? No, no. I mean, that's an awful way to go, isn't it? Also got Jane Foley, head of FX Strategy at Rabobank. Jane, is the economy missing out now because we haven't got a big final on Sunday? Well, yes, you could argue it that way. But alternatively, you could argue that England got a long way through this and further than perhaps many of the pundits had thought they would at the start. So the economy has had a boost along the way because of that. So, you know, the success, we've got to take our hats off to them for that, I think, as well.

29:13Yeah, I think that's a good sentiment, Jane. And Ian, what do you think in terms of, you know, leadership and people just, you know, OK, you didn't get to the final, you didn't win it. But at the same time, what a great competition. Absolutely, but straight away you just know that they'll start digging into the manager and start questioning his tactics, his decisions. It's what we do in this country, isn't it? People want to see you do well until you happen to do well. Then they want to find a reason not to. And last night it would be questionable were his decisions. And as I said, we then matched the night before when Spain had France on the ropes.

29:52They went straight for him. England went 1-0 up and then decided to defend. And then you was never going to defend for 30 minutes in your own six-yard box. I'm sure it's very difficult as a high-profile leader, particularly any time in your career, that people are just picking apart any of your decisions. Yeah, certainly in business and everything else. Every person's got an opinion, even if they're valid or not. But they can all tell you how to run your business and tell you how to act, etc. but certainly as you go further on in business and you employ more people and you've got more contracts etc there's going to be more decisions to be made and it's not always going to be where people are always going to agree with what you do but as long as you're comfortable that it's the right decision.

30:41Well Ian you're at the peak of your career let's talk about people who are only getting into their workforce because it is that time of year again graduation season is in full swing across the UK. Thousands of students are celebrating years of hard work but as record numbers of applications chase a limited supply of graduate jobs, how are this year's graduates feeling about life and work beyond the campus? Well I've been out speaking to some of them. It's a beautiful day today in Manchester and all around me outside Withworth Hall. Manchester's newest graduates are emerging and they've got their gowns on, they've got their motorboards and they're clutching those all-important certificates and posing for photographs with proud families.

31:24But the class of 2026 is stepping into a far less certain future. But graduation day is supposed to be about celebration and the promise of a brilliant career ahead. So let's speak to those graduates and hear what they hope for the future. I just graduated from medicine. I started work in Warrington as a doctor in August, in like three weeks actually.

31:48I'm graduating from law. So have you been applying for jobs? Are you looking to do maybe a start-up? Maybe a postgraduate first, then go in and have my own start-up potentially. My name is Leon. Leon. I graduated from law with politics. Law and criminology. I did law and criminology. Have you been applying for stuff? Yeah. And what's the response been like? It's not law. 8 ,000 people for one job. It's just not really cheap. Everywhere wants loads of experience. I'm Maya and I'm graduating from law with international study. I've spoke to a lot of people who have graduated from law, so I'm like not feeling too nervous a lot of people say there's no pressure to do the bar straight away.

32:27Kind of just see what areas you like. And it's not one of those jobs that AI can take away. Exactly. That's actually why I did the degree, honestly. Really? OK, that's interesting. Yeah, because I was like, but always going to need a barrister. AI can't argue in court. There you go, the voices of new graduates there at Manchester University. From our reporter, Liana Byrne, apparently a rising star, in the department. Anyway, we've got the latest UK Graduate Careers Survey. It's suggesting that the class of 2026 has worked harder than any previous cohorts to secure a graduate job, but has recorded one of the lowest success rates in the survey's history.

33:03Joining me now is Martin Burchill, Managing Director at High Flyers Research, who conducted the survey. Good morning, Martin. Well, good morning, Leanna. Hi. Well, so you've been tracking those graduate jobs on the market for more than 30 years. So how difficult is it for this year's graduates compared with previous generations? So we look at two sides of the coin. So we track the number of graduate jobs available from many of the country's top employers. And what we've seen there is over the last three years, the number of vacancies they're offering has reduced by nearly a quarter. So that's the biggest drop that we've seen in the 30 years that we've been tracking graduate jobs.

33:42It's worse than the huge recession in 08, 09. is certainly worse than the pandemic. I mean, you look at how students have reacted, they've absolutely gone for it. So making record numbers of applications, many of them have had more work experience, they've been engaging with employers all the way through their time at university. But for the class of 2026, actually, they've had fewer job offers than any previous cohort apart from the worst of the pandemic. So they appear to have worked much harder than many of their predecessors and yet getting fewer job offers and less certainty about their future.

34:16Yeah, this number is coming out for me on the screen. 27 % rather, the finalists you surveyed had secured graduate job offer by the end of February. What are we thinking, Martin? Is that a temporary dip or is it just a fundamental problem now? So if you look at how employers recruit their graduates, it's actually one of the things which gives an indication as to how the economy is doing. So when times are hard, one of the first things that's cut is graduate recruitment. So employers don't have to recruit graduates. And by pausing or postponing the intake that they have, it means they can save money very quickly.

34:55But of course, when the good times return, you want to make sure you're recruiting quickly as well. So what we've seen historically is you get a one or two year jolt in the market where recruitment goes down, but it comes back up very quickly what we're seeing here is really unusual so we've had three years in a row um 2026 will be the fourth year if recruiting goes down again and that's unprecedented because we're not in a national emergency we're not in a recession um officially anyway um it's uh it we can't give it a name and it's it's really unclear in terms of how we're going to come out of it but at the heart of it it's all about business confidence um employers don't feel confident enough about their prospects so they're being very cautious with their recruiting.

35:40Ian, I'm going to defer to you on this. You're an employer. Do you take in graduates? Do you have an intake of younger people? And if so, have you pulled back on that? The answer, we take on apprentices as well. We're still taking on apprentices, certainly head office, different departments like recruitment, vetting, certainly in finance. we will continue to go with that. With regard to the graduates it's very very difficult for them isn't it because what they're being qualified for the jobs they're chasing I think with the apprentices is a bit easy as well because if they come into a head office role they might want to go into finance if they don't they're going to HR and to recruitment so there's different roles for them but if somebody's gone through the graduate to be science or gone through law they're not going to want to then do something else.

36:35Martin, is there anything that we can, you know, point to exactly? Is it AI? Is it the fact that in the UK, it costs more to employ somebody now? So if we track it back over these last three years, employers were very cautious in the build up to the last election. Of course, then the first budget from Rachel Reeves put up employers' national insurance and increase the national minimum wage. The cost of employing young people has shot up over these past three years. And all of that contributes to a very gloomy outlook in terms of how employers can approach things. What we're seeing from the top employers, though, is the impact of AI hasn't happened yet.

37:19The idea that they'd be handing over, you know, professions like law or accountancy would be handing things over to AI, that isn't plausible you do still need the people to check the quality of the work that you're using AI for but there will be a correction coming but we just haven't seen that yet so what we're seeing at the moment is a very cautious job market the fear is we then go into another correction which would perhaps be another 15 or 20 percent drop in vacancies so this year students are doing absolutely the right thing they're making twice as many applications as their predecessors did two years ago.

37:55They're being incredibly resilient. But the reality is there are just over 400 ,000 graduates emerging from university celebrating their graduations this week and next. But in reality, we can only find around 200 ,000 graduate level jobs for them. So it's a one in two chance of finding that dream job when you leave university. That's tough. Jane, I left university in 2013. I'm showing my age here. But it was at a time when particularly in Ireland, where I'm from, we were still suffering from the banking collapse, the financial crisis. It was really, really tough to get a job and everyone was looking for an unpaid internship at the time.

38:33But it seems like at the moment, even though there isn't a recession, as Martin said, it's still really tough to get a job. So economically, what is going on here? Well, there may not be a recession, but there is a cyclical loosening of the labour market. So for everybody in the labour market, things are tougher. And often, of course, it is those new entrants that pay the price because firms don't want to let people go. But it's a lot easier just not to hire new people. So there is a cyclical downturn in the economy. This is why economists are trying to think, well, the Bank of England doesn't really want to hike interest rates.

39:12In fact, the market thought that the Bank of England would hutch interest rates before the Iran war to try and make the labour market better. but now with the inflation coming through from oil prices etc maybe it has to hike but that was going to make the labour market worse so this is why economists this is the things that economists right now are trying to trying to balance out so there is this downturn but I think we all know with respect to to graduates it has been tough in the last few years my kids are in their early 20s so I've been quite close to that I know quite a few people whose kids in the last couple of years have never been able to get graduate jobs.

39:49So it's tough out there. I think AI is having some sort of impact. Certainly my own job, there are things that I can do with AI, which means that there is no need, for instance, for maybe editors, for graduates to try and do some of the legwork, to try and find data. So I think it is already having some sort of impact. And certainly the bank that I work for, we no longer take graduates in London because I work for a European bank. And a lot of those jobs, a lot of our jobs had to go back to Europe after Brexit. So we're much smaller here. So there are lots of facts coming together, but no doubt it is really, really tough.

40:33Yeah. Two things, Martin, I wanted to pick up on what Jane said. First of all, that there's some people who will never be able to get a graduate job. And I mean, these summer graduates will probably also competing with people who left pre-university in the previous two years so that must be tough and then also her bank isn't actually taking graduates anymore which you know that's slightly disappointing isn't it so the the queuing effect of a difficult job market that persists for two three four years means yes you absolutely do have graduates from a year ago and two years ago who are competing for entry-level jobs this year so this year's cohort even the numbers for them aren't great but if you add in those previous generations then it gets even harder and there is then a trickle-down effect across pretty much the whole entry-level job market so people used to talk about school leavers being able to get entry-level jobs many graduates are now taking those roles and even work experience you know being able to get a summer job in a pub or hospitality lots of graduates are having to take those roles so there are fewer temporary opportunities as well.

41:41So it just makes it harder all the way through the system, particularly for young people. And yes, a lot of graduate jobs have moved around post-Brexit. In the end, the graduate job market is an international one. Employers who can no longer recruit across country boundaries are finding that difficult. And graduates in London, particularly, I think have been the losers from that. So it is a conflation of lots of different factors. Not least though, the cost of employing young people has shot up over these past three years, which just makes it so much harder for employers to continue expanding or maintaining their graduate programmes.

42:21Now, Ian, Martin was saying earlier, a lot of graduates are having to apply so much, but do employers actually have the capacity to process all of those applications, particularly when it can be helped by AI and they can send off cover letters, tailored CVs, etc.? Yeah, I firmly believe certainly the big blue chips, etc. They will still be looking for the best in class, definitely, because like with everything with your recruitment and your staff, etc., it's always about the churn, etc. And if you can pick up any of them diamonds who are coming through, and I think sometimes with the graduates, they might have to change what they're looking for as well.

43:02So if they're focused on one specific thing, whether it's law, etc., they might have to change and then go back to it. Because as I said, it is tough out there. It is really tough. And actually, I was talking to my younger cousin the other day. He's looking for a job in electrical engineering. And he was saying that you speak to the recruiter, then you speak to the internal recruiter, the HR manager, then you speak to the recruiter again. You might get one first round interview, then another, then another. I mean, this is just for an entry level job. Like, I think that, is that not a bit much?

43:34Yeah, but then if you flip it on the other side, without the graduate jobs. And then you look at when you're advertising for roles and you get 10 people apply for the job and only five people turn up. So there's the other side of it when it comes to recruitment as well. A lot of people are applying for five or six jobs at the same time and then they're accepting jobs, et cetera, but they're only going to be able to take that one job on and there's three or four other people that have been let down. So we see both sides of it as well. Now, Martin, a lot of the time as well, when I was speaking to people on the streets of Manchester, they were telling me that employers look for a lot of experience before you even get an entry level job.

44:15How can that even work, though? Because this is part of the Covid generation where they weren't able to get jobs a lot of the time. And then don't employers also have responsibility to train up these people? So this is this. I mean, you're absolutely right. This is really tricky. we know we interviewed 15 ,000 students who are graduating this summer and for those who've had either a placement year as part of their degree or they've done summer internships they were three times as likely to get a graduate job compared to those who'd had no work experience at all and and the real golden ticket here and this perhaps is relevant people perhaps thinking of starting university you know in September if you can find a degree course that includes a placement year it means you're getting that work experience built in as part of your academic studies and it's it's very clear from talking to certainly the top employers what they're looking for in their new graduates only a fifth of it is the academic achievement the other four fifths is all the other life business and employability skills that people will have developed during their time at university and through the experiences beyond that but the idea that your first to your two one is is the passport into employment, that hasn't been true for a long time.

45:31So focusing on how to get that work experience in this really difficult market, that's really the key to unlocking things. Now we've got a text in from Big Gaz, says good morning, how about the quality of the degrees undertaken? Some are dated and do very little to prepare graduates for what's required. Martin, what do you make of that? Well that's been a criticism for, well a number of years that you know are the subjects which universities offer are they relevant to today's employers and the reality is 70 % of graduate jobs it doesn't matter what subject you've studied so employers aren't hiring you for the content of your degree they're hiring you for the skills that you've developed whilst doing it so that's incredibly flexible it means you can do an arts degree and go and work in marketing you can study geography and go and find a job in the civil service.

46:22You know, there's a whole host of combinations there. But often students will think, well, I've studied this particular subject, therefore I need to find a job that's relevant to it. And one of the keys in a difficult market is to just broaden out that search and look at other opportunities which perhaps aren't directly connected to the subject, but can use the transferable skills that you've developed while you've been at university. All right, Martin Burchill, it's a pleasure having you on. Thank you so much. Managing director at High Flyers Research, a company that speaks to thousands of students each year about their job search.

46:54Thank you so much. Jane, what does it do to the wider economy and graduates leave university with more than, you know,£44 ,000 of debt, but then can't find work? I think it's really tough, I mean, especially for the individual level. I'm not sure about the broader implications for the economy, apart from obviously we have a lot of young people out of work, which is the case right now, it acts as a drag over the medium term. We need young people to be part of this aim to raise our productivity in the country. And one of the reasons I think we can go back to the Tony Blair government that he really wanted everybody to go to university was so that we have a workforce which is well educated, got lots of skills that can really produce and raise the productivity.

47:41So if we can't, you know, as a broader economy, give these young people these sorts of prospects, it is a problem. And then on an individual level, they have the debt. They've got the disappointment. They're scratching their heads, wondering why they went to university, you know, and that creates sort of maybe health issues of its own too. So it's a very significant issue, I think, for all of us. Absolutely. All right, Jane, we're going to talk World Cup. No matter where you were last night, it would have been hard to avoid seeing England playing Argentina in the FIFA World Cup semifinals. Bars around the country were packed with fans hopeful of seeing Kane and co.

48:21put England into a first World Cup final in 60 years. As we heard at the top of the programme, Wake Up to Money's Josh Korber Hoffman caught up with a few before it all went sour. I bought a ticket from England to Australia. So I'm now in Australia to England. Just to see this. Why, sure, yeah. So what have you spent 300 quid on? Beer. Buying a T-shirt and more beer. It's coming out! Oh, unfortunately it was not to be. England crashed out of the competition after Lionel Messi and Argentina came back from a goal down to win 2-1. Joining us now is Mark Palios, the former chief executive of the FA and co-owner of Tranmere Rovers.

49:04Good morning, Mark. Good morning. What did you make of the match? The result was deeply disappointing I think everybody sort of Once we went one ahead You know you start to believe That it's going to be That this is going to be the year Certainly that we'll You know we'll get back Into a World Cup final But deeply disappointing And I think also the manner in You know the way in which It sort of petered out And after we scored We sort of went into our shells somewhat Yeah not an easy watch But at the same time It was a good run And I feel like it's been coming for quite some time. Do you think anything in England's coaching system in the last 20 years has changed, that we're now seeing it bear fruit?

49:46Yeah, absolutely. I think that what people look at is there's an embarrassment of riches at times in terms of the number of talented players that we have. And in 2007, I think it was, the FA introduced what is now sort of the basis of modern British coaching, which is the four-corner model, which includes sort of the psychological, the sociological as well as the tactical and the technical. And 10 years on from that, because it takes about 10 years to rattle through the system, you know, 8-year-old kids become 18. And in 2017, we became the under-17 world champions, the under-19 Europeans, I think, and the under-20 world champions.

50:27So you suddenly see the benefit of that. And I think that, you know, the very fact that there was such a debate as to who Tuchel should take to the World Cup is testament to that, that we are producing a lot of players who now can compete technically with the best in the world. And you see the FIFA rankings and we're fourth in that. And we ended up in the, surprisingly, the FIFA rankings were actually pretty accurate for the semifinalists. Now, by reaching the semifinals, England have guaranteed at least 20 million in performance prize money. Is that check the main financial prize or is the bigger benefit maybe the sales, the sponsorships, et cetera, et cetera?

51:07Well, I think in terms of the financial prize, I mean, the difference between actually winning and where we are is probably 18, 20 million-ish. But actually a lot will go back to the players themselves. I mean, the England players, unlike I think a lot of the other big sides, they get about£2 ,000 appearance a game. But that all goes to charity. And that's something that I think the FA has done for, well, certainly it was started around about the time that I was there. And that is something I don't think the other teams do. But they'll still, if they'd won the competition, I think players would be, allegedly, I'm not a, I don't know exactly, but it would be in the region of about half a million things being reported.

51:57They will get each. So immediately, a lot of that prize money would go. So the rest of it would go back into the coffers of the FA and distribute it around the game in the way that they distribute it. But I think the real benefit to the game... How is that distributed? Is it grassroots football or lower league clubs? Or how is that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. A lot of it gets distributed out in that way. And increasingly, I think the FA's role is more towards helping the grassroots of football rather than the professional game itself. How do you think that will manifest in the next couple of years? I'm not sure that you'll see a palpable difference in that as a consequence of the performance of the England team at the World Cup but the FA does a tremendous amount in fact when I went to the FA I was very surprised the extent to which it's Mark, sorry we have to leave it there Mark Pallias, former Chief Executive of the FA and co-owner of Tramir Rovers thank you so much and also massive thanks to Ian McAllister and Jane Foley And that's it from Wake Up To Money.

53:30It's extraordinary stuff. They've got on a show for us tonight. He gets on his knees and kisses the turf. Five Live Sports. The home of the world's greatest sporting events. Today is the full time window. Listen on BBC Sounds.

54:21How did a boycott Jimmy become a billionaire from posting videos? On Good Bad Billionaire, we're going to find out how the world's most popular YouTuber, Mr Beast, made his fortune. He's buried himself in a coffin for days. Counted to 100 ,000 on camera. And even recreated Squid Games, all in an attempt to go viral on the internet. But it all started when he gave a homeless man$10 ,000. So is he a philanthropist reshaping capitalism? Or is he just the king of the attention economy? Find out on Good Bad Billionaire. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.