WA grads record second highest median salaries

Recent University of Notre Dame Australia graduates have had the greatest success finding full-time employment, but graduates of the University of Western Australia have recorded the highest average salaries.

According to qilt.edu.au, a teaching and learning quality indicator site funded by the federal government, graduate surveys taken from 2012 to 2014 showed 82 per cent of people who received an undergraduate degree from the University of Notre Dame found full-time jobs.

This is compared with 74.4 per cent of graduates from Curtin University securing full-time work, 73.4 per cent of graduates from the University of Western Australia, 68.8 per cent from Murdoch University, and 65.4 per cent from Edith Cowan University.

UWA graduates recorded the highest median annual salaries within their first jobs of $63,000 compared with $58,000 for Edith Cowan and Notre Dame graduates, $57,000 for Curtin graduates and $55,000 for Murdoch graduates.

Male western Australians under the age of 25 who went on to full-time employment in 2014 upon completing undergraduate degrees earned on average $60,000 per year compared with $56,000 for women, according to Graduate Careers Australia.

Collectively, the median annual salary of all 2014 graduates from WA was the second highest in the nation ($58,000), behind Northern Territorians ($59,000).

Northern Territory male graduates recorded a median annual salary of $62,600, while the average annual salary for females in the NT was $57,200.

Victorian graduates recorded the lowest median annual salaries – $52,000 for men, and $50,000 for women.

GCA data also showed students who studied dentistry recorded the highest median annual salary ($75,000), followed by optometry ($70,000) and engineering ($62,000).

The lowest median annual salaries were recorded by pharmacy graduates ($40,000), those who studied art and design ($40,000) and humanities graduates ($46,000).