Financial services jobs dominate the list of best-paying employers for graduates looking for their first step on the career ladder, with the top five most competitive salaries on offer in the banking sector.
The survey of 1,950 graduate salaries by Emolument.com found graduate quantitative analysts receive a basic salary of £65,000 with an average bonus of around £20,000, making it one of the best-paying jobs around.
The majority of graduates in an analyst role had studied to master’s level, mostly in either economics or physics, with seven out of 10 of the best paying jobs mostly filled by graduates with an extra two years’ study under their belts.
The second best paying graduate job was in bank structuring, the third institutional bank sales, fourth in M&A and leveraged finance and the fifth was in trading.
The average basic salary for a graduate in institutional sales was £50,000 with the potential to secure a bonus of £8,000 a year.
Emolument said: “Buy-side quantitative analysts are by far the best paid of all new recruits. Quants complete their studies with highly technical knowledge with which they can hit the ground running, making them some of the most sought-after graduates.
“M&A professionals and traders however will be the ones generating revenue for their firm once they reach a certain level of seniority, which will be reflected in their earnings, as they gain experience.”
Excluding jobs in finance, data scientist roles offered the best pay for graduates, followed by legal jobs, product management roles and strategy consulting.
Alice Leguay, co-founder of Emolument.com, said digital and tech jobs could soon catch up with banking and finance as the best graduate jobs in terms of pay.
“For the last 30 years, a clear path pointed to finance as not only the best paying sector for young employees, but also a guarantee of substantial paychecks throughout their career,” she said. “With huge growth in demand for digital and data skills by employers across all industries, new jobs are now emerging, competing with traditional finance graduate programme. And we cannot see a reason why this trend should stop.”
