Australian Degrees and Employer Satisfaction: The 2025 Evidence

Australian employers who supervised recent graduates in 2025 reported an overall satisfaction rate of 84.2%, according to the Employer Satisfaction Survey (ESS) run under the Quality Indicators for Learning and Teaching (QILT) program. That figure comes with a 90% confidence interval of 82.9% to 85.4%, meaning the estimate is based on a sample survey rather than a census of every employer in the country. The same survey shows employers were most satisfied with graduates’ technical skills, at 94.0%, and least satisfied with overall employability skills, at 86.2%. These are national figures covering all course levels and all provider types, not results for any single institution or individual graduate.

The ESS is one of several QILT surveys that feed into the public ComparED website. It asks employers who have recently supervised a graduate from an Australian higher education institution to rate their satisfaction across five skill areas: foundation skills, adaptive skills, collaborative skills, technical skills, and employability skills. The 2025 results represent the most recent frozen data release at the time of writing.

What the 2025 National Numbers Show

Across all course levels and provider types, the 2025 ESS produced the following point estimates for employer satisfaction, each with a 90% confidence interval:

Foundation skills: 93.3% (92.4% to 94.1%)
Adaptive skills: 90.7% (89.6% to 91.7%)
Collaborative skills: 88.6% (87.5% to 89.7%)
Technical skills: 94.0% (93.1% to 94.8%)
Employability skills: 86.2% (85.0% to 87.4%)
Overall satisfaction: 84.2% (82.9% to 85.4%)

Technical skills and foundation skills sit at the top of the list, while employability skills and overall satisfaction trail behind. The standard deviations for these estimates range from 2.1 for adaptive skills to 3.1 for overall satisfaction, which gives a sense of how much responses vary around the national average.

It is worth reading these numbers as a snapshot of employer sentiment in 2025, not as a permanent ranking of skill areas. The gaps between categories are modest, and the confidence intervals overlap in several cases.

How Employer Satisfaction Has Shifted Over Five Years

The QILT data also includes a five-year trend table, which allows a direct comparison of the same survey items across recent years. The overall satisfaction figure has moved within a narrow band:

2021: 85.3% (84.3% to 86.3%)
2022: 84.1% (83.0% to 85.1%)
2023: 83.7% (82.6% to 84.8%)
2024: 85.5% (84.4% to 86.4%)
2025: 84.2% (82.9% to 85.4%)

Technical skills have remained the strongest area throughout the period, with 2025 marking the highest point at 94.0%. Employability skills have hovered in the mid-80s, with 2025 at 86.2%. The 2024 overall figure of 85.5% was the highest in the five-year window, while 2023 was the lowest at 83.7%. These year-to-year movements are small and should not be over-interpreted as a clear upward or downward trend.

Employer Satisfaction by Field of Study

The ESS also breaks results down by broad field of education. This is where the picture becomes more varied, and where the sample sizes shrink considerably. The confidence intervals for individual fields are wider than for the national totals, so the point estimates should be treated with extra caution.

Agriculture, environmental and related studies recorded the highest overall satisfaction at 90.0%, though the confidence interval spans 81.6% to 95.0%. Foundation skills in this field reached 100.0%, with no confidence interval reported, while technical skills came in at 98.3%. Employability skills were lower at 83.1%.

Architecture and building showed a different pattern. Technical skills were strong at 98.0%, but overall satisfaction was 81.6%, the lowest among the listed fields. Employability skills sat at 83.7%.

Creative arts had the lowest overall satisfaction figure at 79.7%, with a wide confidence interval of 70.6% to 86.6%. Its technical skills rating was 90.7%, the lowest technical score among the fields shown.

Education performed consistently across most measures. Overall satisfaction was 86.6%, with foundation skills at 92.5% and technical skills at 93.2%. Employability skills reached 86.4%.

Engineering and related technologies posted an overall satisfaction figure of 87.1%. Foundation skills were 95.9% and technical skills 96.4%. Employability skills came in at 84.9%.

Health recorded 84.5% overall satisfaction. Foundation skills were 91.3%, technical skills 93.8%, and employability skills 83.3%.

Information technology showed a notable split. Technical skills were very high at 97.4%, and collaborative skills reached 92.7%. Overall satisfaction, however, was 81.5%, with a confidence interval of 75.9% to 86.1%. Employability skills were 87.7%, the highest among the fields listed.

Management and commerce recorded 84.7% overall satisfaction. Foundation skills were 93.3%, technical skills 92.3%, and employability skills 87.4%.

Natural and physical sciences posted 83.1% overall satisfaction. Foundation and technical skills both reached 95.3%, while employability skills were the highest of any field at 90.8%.

Society and culture recorded 81.8% overall satisfaction. Foundation skills were 92.5%, technical skills 93.1%, and employability skills 87.3%.

These field-level figures describe employer satisfaction with graduates from broad disciplinary groupings. They do not rank individual universities, and they do not tell you how a specific course or campus will be perceived by employers.

What the Survey Measures and What It Does Not

The ESS is a sample survey, not a full enumeration. The confidence intervals attached to each estimate reflect the uncertainty that comes from surveying a subset of employers rather than the entire population. When a field has a small number of responses, the interval widens, which is why some field-level figures have ranges spanning more than ten percentage points.

The survey captures employer perceptions of graduate skills at a point in time. It does not measure employment outcomes directly, nor does it assess the quality of a specific curriculum. A high technical skills rating suggests employers see graduates as technically capable, but it says nothing about whether a graduate found a job quickly or earned a particular salary.

The QILT program publishes its data processing and procedures documentation, which explains how the surveys are administered and how results are calculated. Anyone comparing figures across years or fields should consult that documentation to understand the methodology.

How to Verify the Data Yourself

The QILT website is the primary public source for the Employer Satisfaction Survey. It hosts the survey results and links to the ComparED platform, where you can look up data by institution and field of study. ComparED also includes a help section that explains how to read the data, including the meaning of confidence intervals and the difference between national and institution-level figures.

If you want to check a specific number, the process is straightforward. Go to the QILT site, locate the ESS section, and find the data tables for the year you are interested in. The tables show the point estimate, the confidence interval, and the number of responses where available. For institution-level comparisons, ComparED allows you to filter by provider and course level.

One caution: the data on ComparED is updated on a release cycle. The 2025 figures are the most recent at the time of writing, but a later release may revise or replace them. Always check the publication date on the page you are viewing.

What Employers Value Most

Looking across the 2025 results, employers consistently rate technical and foundation skills higher than employability and collaborative skills. This pattern holds at the national level and in most individual fields. It does not mean employability skills are unimportant; it means employers are less satisfied with them relative to other areas.

The QILT data also includes a separate measure of how graduates themselves view the importance of their qualification for their current employment. In 2025, 32.9% of graduates rated their qualification as very important, and 19.6% rated it important. This is a different survey item from employer satisfaction, but it provides context on how graduates perceive the link between their degree and their job.

For prospective students, the practical takeaway is that employer satisfaction varies more by skill area than by field of study. Technical skills are a consistent strength across most disciplines. Employability skills, which include things like teamwork, communication, and problem-solving in a workplace context, are the area where employers express the most room for improvement.

How This Data Fits Into Course Research

If you are comparing Australian degrees, the ESS figures are one input among several. They describe employer sentiment at a national or field level, not the experience of any individual graduate. A course with strong technical training may still produce graduates who struggle with workplace communication, and the survey data can help you see where a particular field tends to land.

The ComparED platform is the most useful tool for this kind of research. It lets you look at institution-level data alongside the national benchmarks, so you can see how a specific university compares to the overall picture. The help section on ComparED explains the limitations of the data, including the fact that small institutions may have very wide confidence intervals or suppressed results.

When you read any satisfaction figure, ask three questions: Which survey produced it? What population does it cover? What time period does it refer to? The ESS 2025 figures cover employers of graduates from all course levels and all provider types, surveyed in the 2025 cycle. They are not a prediction of your future employer’s opinion, and they are not a guarantee of any employment outcome.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is the Employer Satisfaction Survey a census of all Australian employers?

No. It is a sample survey. The confidence intervals published alongside each estimate reflect the sampling uncertainty. The national figures have relatively narrow intervals because the sample is large, while field-level figures can have much wider intervals.

Can I use these figures to rank universities?

No. The ESS publishes national and field-level results, and ComparED provides institution-level data, but the survey does not produce a single ranking of universities by employer satisfaction. Comparing institutions requires looking at the full data tables and understanding the confidence intervals for each provider.

Why do technical skills score higher than employability skills?

The survey asks employers to rate satisfaction across five separate skill areas. The 2025 results show technical skills at 94.0% and employability skills at 86.2%. This suggests employers are more satisfied with graduates’ technical preparation than with their workplace-ready soft skills, though the gap is not enormous.

Do these figures apply to international students?

The national figures cover all graduates from Australian higher education institutions, regardless of citizenship or visa status. The survey does not separate domestic and international graduates in the tables cited here. If you are an international student, the data still describes the employer sentiment toward graduates from the Australian system as a whole.

Where can I find the most current data?

The QILT website and ComparED platform are the official public sources. The 2025 release is the most recent at the time of writing. Check the publication date on any page you view, as later releases may update the figures.

参考资料

This article is general planning information. It does not provide an official credential-equivalency, professional-registration, accreditation or admission decision. Verify current requirements directly with the relevant institution, regulator or professional body before acting.