More jobs for graduates, but ICT specialists flee abroad

Salaries are on the rise - and this is another piece of good news - after having fallen in the previous two years. One year after graduation, the net monthly salary is, on average, €1,492 for first-level graduates and €1,488 for second-level graduates, with an increase, in real terms, of 6.9% for the former and 3.1% for the latter compared to 2023. Five years after graduation, the net monthly salary is €1,770 for first-level graduates and €1,847 for second-level graduates; in this case, the growth in real terms is 2.9% for the former and 3.6% for the latter.

However, this improvement is not enough to convince our young people to stay in Italy. In fact, 4.1% of those employed one year after graduation and 4.6% of those employed five years after graduation work abroad. Those leaving the peninsula are mainly men (4.7% at one year and 5.6% at five years) compared to women (3.7% and 3.8%) and the most successful graduates in terms of grades and regularity in their studies.

Most of the expatriates are graduates from the computer science and ICT (5.6% among one-year and 11.3% among five-year graduates), science (8.2% and 10.3%), linguistics (8.6% and 7.7%), as well as from the political-social and communication (5.8% and 7.6%) and industrial and information engineering (5.6% and 8.2%) groups.

If they do it is mainly to earn more. The average salaries received abroad, one year after graduation, exceed 2,200 euros per month net (+54.2% compared to those who stayed in Italy); at five years they touch 2,900 euros for those employed abroad (+61.7% compared to those who stayed).

Other shadows emerge from the profile of graduates, which was presented together with the 2025 Employment Status Report and which covered more than 305,000 2024 graduates from 80 universities. We are thinking of the slight deterioration in the data on age at graduation and regularity in studies.

The age at graduation, for graduates as a whole in 2024, is 25.8 years (24.5 years for first-level graduates, 27.1 for single-cycle and 27.4 for two-year master's degrees). Although lower than ten years ago (it was 26.5 years in 2014), it has risen again in the last two years (+0.2 years compared to 2022).

As for regularity, 58.7 per cent of graduates in 2024 will complete their studies on time. Already in 2023, for the first time in 12 years, there was a slight decrease in the share of regular graduates (-1% compared to 2022). The trend continued in 2024 when there was a further decline (-2.8 percentage points compared to 2023), most likely due to the suspension of the academic year closure extensions that had been granted to students after the Covid-19 emergency.

For the first time, AlmaLaurea focuses on one of the Italian mails: the mismatch between skills acquired and work done. Well, among those in employment one year after obtaining their degree, more than 30 per cent are not making much use of what they learned at university and are doing a job for which the degree is not formally required. At five years this percentage drops but still exceeds a quarter of the target group. A figure to reflect on.