According to a report by Novuna, Edinburgh ranks among the UK’s top 10 university cities for student access to part-time work. However, to what extent does this accurately represent the student experience in Edinburgh?
As fresher’s week has been and gone, we are all now settling into student life. For many students, at the same time as getting to grips with a new academic year, which can be hard enough on its own, entering the job market almost immediately is now a top priority. According to Novuna personal finance, nine in ten university applicants expect to work alongside their degree to cover living costs.
Speaking to a second-year student who has had a variety of different jobs since she started university, she emphasised a lack of surprise at this figure. She notes that this is especially the case for students on smaller student loans who are also supported minimally from parents and caregivers. One driving factor for her immediate job searching was the price of her accommodation, which was “the absolute top of [her] budget,” at £6995 per academic year. To combat this, she worked to contribute to her living costs. She is most concerned by the rising prices of accommodation in Edinburgh, as she highlights that this same accommodation has now risen to £7,465. Therefore, it is no surprise that 65% of current full-time undergraduates already have a paid job. Theresa Lindsay, Chief Marketing Officer at Novuna notes: “Having a job is no longer about funding nights out — it is about helping to fund university itself.”
Yet, this leaves the question of how accessible the job market in Edinburgh really is? Novuna’s report finds that in Edinburgh there are supposedly 159 jobs available for every 100 students. While the student I spoke to was not surprised about the necessity to attain a job, she was shocked by this stat. She expressed: “I felt the job market here was far more competitive.”
I sat down with another student who has been battling the job market since their freshers week last year. She found this stat equally surprising, as she explained that she had sent out around 30 job applications in the past month alone, emphasising the lack of responses she had heard from job-hunting platform Indeed.
What was most interesting about her experience was how even though she had received a job offer through a catering agency, she was struggling with a continual lack of hours due to the nature of a zero-hours contract. I wondered whether this was the reason behind Novuna’s data appearing misleading. She described being elated to have finally received a job offer only to log onto the shift allocation app to see very few available hours.
However, Anna, a student who has recently started a new job at the Edinburgh University Student’s Association, takes a different view: she said that it depended on the kind of job students are looking for. She had also experienced the void of Indeed but found her experience with the university was largely a different one. Applying to several roles, she was communicated with effectively and within a reasonable time frame. The best part of the job she said was the pay, at £13.45 an hour, the real living wage for Edinburgh, rather than the possibility of minimum wage in many other jobs she had applied for.
So, what are the best options for students to find part-time jobs this academic year? Posing this question at the end of my conversations, common answers tended to be tutoring, seasonal work, and jobs amongst the student union. A fourth-year student at Queen Margaret University raved about their time at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, which helped them cover costs of renting in the city over the summer months.
The reality of job hunting in Edinburgh is a much more intense and gruelling endeavour than the data suggests. It seems students are still scrambling to become employed in an environment acutely pressurised by continually rising living costs.
Image by Ulia Makoveeva for The Student.
