Further training and qualifications

Data on the percentage of people aged 25 and 32 years with a university degree, by socio-economic background.

Summary main findings
By socio-economic background
About the data
Download the data

Summary main findings

Data from 2014 and 2021 shows that the percentage of young people with university degrees went up between the ages of 25 and 32 years.

20% of people from working class backgrounds had a degree by 25 years old, rising to 34% by 32 years old.

34% of people from intermediate backgrounds had a degree by 25 years old, rising to 55% by 32 years old.

57% of people from professional backgrounds had a degree by 25 years old, rising to 70% by 32 years old.

By socio-economic background

Percentage of young people born in 1989 who had degrees by the ages of 25 and 32 years, by socio-economic background (UK, 2014 and 2021)

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Percentage of young people born in 1989 who had degrees by the ages of 25 and 32 years, by socio-economic background (UK, 2014 and 2021)
Age	Working (%)	Intermediate (%)	Professional (%)
25	20.3	34.2	56.7
32	33.9	54.7	69.7

For the full download file, see Download the data.

About the data

Data source

Office for National Statistics (ONS), Labour Force Survey (LFS) from 2014 and 2021

Time period

2014 and 2021

Geographic area

What the data measures

The data shows the percentage of people born in 1989 who had a university degree by the ages of 25 and 32 years old, by socio-economic background.

Data is shown for the following socio-economic backgrounds:

professional class (combining the higher and lower professional classes)
intermediate class
working class (combining the higher and lower working classes)

These are based on the National Statistics Socio-economic Classification (NS-SEC), set by the ONS.

Things you need to know

Data is weighted using LFS probability weights.

The data compares 2 separate samples from surveys carried out in 2014 and 2021. It does not compare the same individuals at different time points.

The data includes people aged 25 years in the first group, as most young people have completed full-time education and started work by that age.

The error bars show 95% confidence intervals. These intervals show where we expect the true value from a population to be 95% of the time. For example, a confidence interval with the range of values from 5 to 10 implies that there is a 95% chance that the true population value is between 5 and 10, and a 5% chance that it is outside of this range. The narrower the confidence interval or range, the more precise the estimate. Read more about confidence intervals

Type of data

Survey data

Full report

Download the data

Download full dataset (CSV, 1KB)

This file contains the following variables:

Indicator code
Indicator name
Area type
Area code
Area name
Time period
Socio-economic background
Age
Sex
Value
Sample size
Lower confidence interval
Upper confidence interval
Standard error
Unit

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