Employability · Higher education
Which graduates Spanish employers expect to hire
A new reading of the CRUE study separates intention from actual hiring. Fifty-one per cent of surveyed employers expected to recruit recent graduates within the following two years; engineering, business and commercial education, and computing were the most frequently cited profile families.
- Source published
- Effective date or period
- Survey: Sep 2023–Feb 2024 · two-year outlook
- Article on this portal
Employer forecast · Not observed vacancies or contracts

Our interpretation
Why it matters
Study guidance benefits from knowing which profiles employers say they need, but also when the evidence was collected and how much comes from large organisations. The outlook is stronger among large and internationally active employers.
Editorial recommendation
What to do
Students and advisers can connect degree fields with entry roles, placements and regional demand. Universities should compare these signals with graduate outcomes and current vacancies before changing programmes.
Verified facts
What the study actually measures
Fifty-five universities carried out the fieldwork from September 2023 to the end of February 2024. The report appeared in 2025, and the university employment observatories published a chapter-specific analysis on 25 September 2026.
Across the surveyed employers, 51% intended to hire recent graduates during the following two years. The share reached 80% among large companies and 63% among internationally active organisations; those higher figures should not be presented as the result for the whole sample.
Full CRUE and university observatories reportAnalysis published 25/09/2026
Editorial analysis
Profile families and practical interpretation
Among profiles linked to the occupations employers expected to recruit, engineering accounted for 21.1%, business and commercial education for 12.8%, and computing for 8.4%. These are broad educational families rather than rankings of individual degrees, universities or specialisms.
Signals differ by sector, company size and geographic reach. Each field should therefore be translated into roles and requirements: engineering into technical and industrial work; business studies into administration, finance, management and commercial roles; and computing into software, systems and data, checked against current local openings.
Context and timetable
Why this is not a degree ranking
These are employer responses collected in 2023–2024, not published vacancies, registered contracts or people ultimately hired. Aggregate volume estimates may be influenced by unusually large responses from individual employers, a dispersion noted in the report.
The evidence is a guidance signal, not an individual employment guarantee. It should be combined with cohort-based graduate outcomes, job-quality measures, experience requirements and recent demand from job platforms and public employment services.
Primary source and reading standard
CRUE · University talent and business (2025)Check the original document and its date before acting. The portal’s proposals are labelled as editorial recommendations and do not replace applicable rules.
Disclosure: Luis Manuel Tolmos has a professional connection with Brains International Schools, described in his profile. This analysis is independent.
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