Graduate retention: which UK cities keep their university graduates?

Graduate retention rates by UK city

The most detailed city-level picture comes from Centre for Cities, which measured where graduates were working six months after leaving university.

Source: Centre for Cities, The Great British Brain Drain. Figures cover the 2013/14 and 2014/15 graduating cohorts.

Scale does most of the work. Manchester, Birmingham and Belfast retain roughly half their graduates, while retention falls from 38% in large cities to 26% in medium cities and 23% in small ones. London dominates the destination side: of graduates who moved city after university, 22% went there. Because these cohorts graduated more than a decade ago, the figures are best read as a structural picture rather than a current one.

What the latest HESA data shows

More recent HESA data suggests that the pull towards major regional cities remains visible today. Its May 2026 analysis, covering graduates from 2017/18 to 2022/23, found that around three quarters of graduates living in the North East, North West or Yorkshire and the Humber were working in the same region 15 months after qualifying. Within that, HESA observed a clear movement towards large cities such as Leeds, Manchester and Newcastle, and away from surrounding areas such as Kirklees and Oldham.

HESA also found that around one in five graduates employed in the UK work in the same local authority where they studied. Graduates who lived, studied and then worked in the same local authority were most common in Scotland, at 16.4%, followed by Yorkshire and the Humber at 13.6%, the highest rate of any English region. HESA measures at local authority level rather than city level, so the figures are not directly comparable with Centre for Cities, but both point in the same direction.

Leeds and the third largest graduate gain in the UK

Centre for Cities found that Leeds records the third largest net graduate gain of any UK city, behind only London and Manchester, and ranks seventh once city size is accounted for, ahead of both.

Its 29% retention rate, 16th among UK cities, partly reflects where its universities recruit. Institutions with national and international catchments tend to keep fewer of their own graduates. Manchester retains over half, which Centre for Cities attributes to the depth of its job market and the fact that a third of its students grew up in the city. Leeds keeps a meaningful share of its own graduates and adds a far larger number from elsewhere, so its graduate workforce is drawn from universities across the UK rather than a single local pipeline.

Where graduates work in Leeds

Two districts are adding the kind of employment that keeps and attracts graduates. The Leeds Innovation Arc is a 150-hectare health and research district west of the city centre, anchored on Leeds General Infirmary, the University of Leeds, Leeds Beckett University and Leeds Arts University, with health tech and life sciences businesses clustering around the university’s Nexus innovation hub. It gives graduates of the city’s own universities a reason to stay.

South of the river, the South Bank is adding office employers at Aire Park, including interactive investor, Jacobs and, from 2027, Eversheds Sutherland. It has also been proposed as one of seven government new towns, with capacity for around 20,000 homes. This is the kind of professional employment that draws graduates in from other cities.

What this means for rental demand

Graduates who stay and graduates who arrive both move into the wider private rented sector, typically shared homes or one and two-bedroom apartments close to work, transport and city-centre amenities. Because the two flows come from different sources, demand is not tied to any single university’s intake, and it is less concentrated in the September cycle that governs student accommodation.

The cost of staying on differs sharply between cities.

Source: ONS, Private rent and house prices, UK: September 2026, released 16 September 2026. Rents are for August 2026 and buyer prices for July 2026. House price data are provisional.

Leeds rents sit around 18% below the UK average and roughly £230 a month below Manchester, with entry-level purchase prices lower too. A graduate in Liverpool pays around two thirds of the Manchester rent, and Liverpool rents also rose fastest over the year, up 5.6% against 4.2% in both Leeds and Manchester. Leeds sits between the two, combining a deep graduate job market with housing costs below Manchester’s.

The counter-argument worth taking seriously

There is a reasonable case that graduate demand outside London is weaker than retention figures imply. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, in its analysis of the changing geography of jobs published in November 2023, found that graduate jobs have become more concentrated in London, with the share of graduates working in graduate-level roles falling almost everywhere else. Cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds do hold relatively high concentrations of high-skilled jobs, though less so than southern cities of comparable size.

Near-term hiring is also soft. Indeed Hiring Lab reported in December 2025 that graduate job postings were down 13% year on year, although they were furthest below baseline in London and the South East.

Retention and graduate gain therefore support rental demand rather than guarantee it, and a city’s ability to create high-skilled jobs matters more than its student numbers. On that test, Leeds has more to point to than most. It hosts 30 national and international banks, all of the Big Four accountancy firms, HMRC, Leeds Teaching Hospitals and Channel 4’s national headquarters. The Bank of England, which employs just under 300 people in Leeds and plans to reach at least 500 by 2027, secured a new long-term office at Capitol House in September 2026, and the Financial Conduct Authority has expanded its Leeds office repeatedly since opening it in 2022.

The bottom line

Leeds retains 29% of its own graduates and records the third largest net graduate gain in the country, a graduate population growing from two directions at once. For any city, the questions worth asking are whether it is creating high-skilled jobs, how many graduates it keeps and attracts, and how far apart renting and buying sit locally.

Our Leeds location page sets out the local market in more detail, alongside our other locations and current developments.

This article is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. Property investment carries risk, including the risk of losing capital. Independent financial advice should be sought before making any investment decision.