As the credit crunch continues to squeeze the life out of the property markets in America and the UK, sending banks rushing to announce profit warnings and nudging economies around the world into recession, you might think that the graduate outlook for 2009 was fairly gloomy.

But, while the economic woes are accompanied by a steady flow of job losses in the finance sector, the message from recruiters is that prospects for graduates are brighter than they seem — even in financial services.

A study of organisations in The Times Top 100 Graduate Employers, provided by High Fliers Research, show that although graduate vacancies with the UK’s top employers are set to decrease by 1 per cent next year, a quarter of the top 100 plan to hire more graduates, and more than half believe they will recruit similar numbers to 2008. “For us it is a question of business as usual,” says John Morewood, right, senior graduate recruitment and development manager at HSBC, Britain’s largest bank, which is twelfth on the list.

“We aim for our graduates to be in a senior management position about eight years after finishing their graduate programme. So when we plan the number of graduates to recruit each year, we work out how many senior management vacancies we will have available in the future, assume an annual attrition rate and calculate the figures back.

“If you look at recruitment for our UK retail and commercial arm, this year we recruited 230 graduates and 60 interns, and next year we are looking to recruit just over 230 graduates and 70 interns.”

Surprisingly, the biggest cutbacks in graduate positions are not at the City investment banks, where recruitment is down 13 per cent, but in consumer goods manufacturing and the media, both down by just under a third. Accountancy services continue to employ the most graduates, with Pricewater-

houseCoopers, Deloitte and KPMG each planning to sign 1,000-plus recruits.

For graduates who want to maximise their chances of getting a job, the public sector is set to boost its graduate intake by 20 per cent, while the Armed Forces plan a 12 per cent increase.

One reason that graduate placement numbers are holding up well in the financial services is that employers seem to have learnt a lesson from previous economic downturns. Before, when market conditions were tough, employers rushed to cut back on recruiting, and laid off staff, then struggled to hire when business picked up again.

“A few years ago some large organisations pulled out of the graduate market in almost a knee-jerk reaction,” Morewood says. “It takes a long time to restore students’ confidence in the brand once you do that. Having said that, there will undoubtedly be some organisations where short-term pressures necessitate a short-term response.”

Most of the top 100 will be marketing 2009 graduate vacancies at 15 to 20 universities. Those targeted most frequently include Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol, Durham and Manchester.

There is good news on salaries, too. Average new graduate salaries across the top 100 are predicted to rise to £27,000 in 2009, up £1,500 on 2008. Students looking for big salaries when they are starting out need not head to an investment bank or City law firm, though. The research shows that the first top 100 UK employer to offer a graduate starting salary of £40,000, publicly at least, is Aldi, the supermarket chain.

Overall, then, despite the credit crunch, the impression from the leading employers is that next year’s graduates will have good reason to be optimistic.

Sally Hyman, survey director at High Fliers Research, says: “Budget cuts may mean there will be fewer champagne receptions at the universities during the recruitment process but students leaving university next summer will still have a broad range of options open to them.”

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