Introduction

This chapter takes as its focus access to graduate employment opportunities in London and considers the role of the capital city in the reproduction of inequality. While graduate employment in professional and management positions is available across the UK, the Social Mobility Commission (2019) documents how London has seen a disproportionate growth in these positions in comparison to the rest of the UK, with 45 per cent of new jobs at this level being created in the capital. London is also widely recognized as a hub for elite graduate recruiters, particularly in respect to jobs in finance, law and IT.

The recruitment practices of these and other industries located in London have regularly been found to favour those who are already advantaged, effectively reproducing class inequalities. Cook et al (2012), for example, found that privately educated graduates were 13 times more likely to be employed in a London law firm than their state-educated peers. Through analysis of the recruitment and selection procedures of these firms, they conclude that these practices reproduce inequalities because they rely heavily on forms of symbolic capital to which the privileged have greater access. They discuss a specific ‘City effect’, where the culture of law firms conforms to the doxa of the field in recruiting the elite, something very much replicated in other elite industries in the city. Oakley et al (2017) draw similar conclusions in relation to the cultural and creative industries. Through analysis of the national Labour Force Survey, they highlight how the privileged dominate the sector, especially in London, with over 60 per cent of those employed in the cultural and creative industries in London coming from professional/managerial backgrounds, while the figure for the rest of the UK is roughly 45 per cent.

This pattern of recruitment practices then extends into a distinctive class pay gap within managerial and professional positions. Findings from the Social Mobility Commission's (2019) ‘State of the nation’ report document that those in professional or managerial occupations from working-class backgrounds earn 17 per cent per year less than their colleagues from more privileged backgrounds, and Friedman, Laurison and Macmillan (2017) note an average pay gap of £10,660 per year for those from working-class backgrounds compared to those from professional or managerial backgrounds.