Rubbish Check
Daily Mail Money · 27 October 2026
source“Graduate jobs plunge to lowest in a decade as AI and rising costs hit entry-level hiring”
R4/ 10
Selective
Rubbish Rating — 1 = base fact, 10 = pure rubbish
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In short
Rubbish Talk rates Daily Mail Money's claim that AI and rising costs are behind graduate vacancies hitting a decade-low a 4/10 because the Adzuna vacancy figure is real and verified, but the specific "AI" causation is stitched in from a separate, general hiring-manager survey rather than Adzuna's own graduate data.
The Verdict
Selective, not false. The headline's core number checks out against Adzuna's own report, but the causal link to AI is built by splicing in a Reed survey and an IMF speech that were never about graduate vacancies specifically, dressing up a plausible theory as a settled cause.
What actually happened
Adzuna's September job market data showed graduate vacancies falling to a record low in its own dataset, which only runs back to 2016. The Mail's own body copy attributes the fall to a mix of factors: rising employment costs (minimum wage increases, the employer National Insurance rise) and growing AI adoption, the latter sourced not from Adzuna but from a separate Reed recruitment survey and a comment by IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva.
Key facts
- Graduate vacancies on Adzuna fell to graduate vacancies fall 43%, with minimum wage increases of around 4% reportedly expected, with Adzuna reports 7,826 graduate vacancies in September, down 43% year-on-year and a record low in its data.
- Adzuna's own data history only began in 2016, so "lowest in a decade" and "record low" are effectively the same claim, not an exaggeration.
- Prior Adzuna readings this year already showed graduate vacancies at record lows: July's figure was Graduate vacancies fall to a fresh record low of 8,383, down 45.6% annually and Graduate vacancies fell to 8,383 in July, a new record low, undercutting the previous low of 8,398 set in May, and down -45.6% year-on-year. September's 7,826 continues a decline that was already well underway, not a sudden new development.
- Average graduate salary held broadly flat, per the article's own figure of roughly £27,700, undercutting any "AI is driving pay down" framing, if implied.
What to watch for
- Watch whether Adzuna itself ever directly attributes the graduate decline to AI adoption in its own commentary, versus coverage continuing to borrow that causation from unrelated surveys.
- The Reed survey measuring hiring managers' views on AI covers the whole labour market, not graduate roles specifically. Future reporting should distinguish general AI sentiment from graduate-specific causal data.
- Scotland's much sharper regional decline and the healthcare sector's recovery are genuine nuances buried below the AI narrative; expect these regional and sectoral splits to resurface as the story develops.
About this scoreThe R-Score is Rubbish Talk's editorial opinion on how far a headline's framing sits from what the underlying facts support. It is a judgement about presentation and emphasis, not an allegation that any outlet has acted dishonestly. Every figure we rely on is linked under Receipts so you can check it yourself.
