Call them the New Menials. Educated young people with qualifications which – at the moment – are about as useful as shares in Woolworths. So what can they do? Answer: you name it. Internet employment sites such as Gumtree are full of highly qualified people who say they are up for anything. “Will do any job,” is one catchphrase. “Manual labour accepted,” is another.

As the recession grinds on, career sights have been realigned. This attitude is borne out by plain realism: Britain’s leading graduate employers have reduced their recruitment targets for 2009 by 17 per cent, and expect to hire 3,400 fewer graduates in 2009 than they had planned to do at the start of the milk-round recruitment season. So dreams of building a successful career have been exchanged for the hunt for practical, paid work: nannying, gardening or cleaning, the sort of stuff the blue-collar class usually does.

How do the graduates cope with this? Some are bitter; some feel humiliated. Others are just getting on with it, earning as best they can, and trying to forget about those hard-won degree certificates gathering dust in a bottom drawer.

Hannah Rayner

Having graduated in French and Italian from the University of Kent in 2007, Rayner, 24, then did an MA in translation and linguistics, focusing on Italian, at Westminster University. Since graduating, she has been a barista at an independent coffee shop in central London. She has had a few interviews for administrative jobs, but with no success. “They weren’t even professional jobs, and I still couldn’t get them.” The only pukka translating jobs she’s had a sniff at have been unpaid internships. “People will pay your travel, but that’s it. They give all the paid work to experienced translators. But I can’t afford to work for nothing.” In the café, she’s earning £5.75 an hour. “It’s the minimum wage, meaning I take home £90 a week. It no way covers my rent, which has to be subsidised by my parents.”

Does she like fluffing up the cappuccinos? “I enjoy being with the people I work with in the coffee shop but it is a basic role. I’m not using my brain in any way, which is something I have always done. People come into the shop, and assume you aren’t very educated.” In fact, it’s quite the opposite. “Actually, between the staff, we have four or five degrees.” Rayner has decided to use her initiative, and has put a feisty ad on Gumtree, drawing attention to her grey matter. “Extremely intelligent and on-the-ball graduate looking for a challenging role,” is the opening line. “I was so frustrated with the industry and thought I’d try my luck,” she says. “What did I have to lose? I’ve always been under the impression that if you have some solid education behind you, you will find a professional job.” Was it a successful move? “So far, I’ve been contacted by a nanny agency and an online gambling site.”

Glen McCormack

Last year, McCormack, 24, left the University of Nottingham with a 2:1 in archaeology. Since then he’s not had a formal job and is living with his mother and her new husband in a flat in Birmingham. “I must have applied for about 150 jobs without success,” he says. “Employers either tell me I am overqualified or under-experienced.” The son of a decorator and a florist, McCormack left school at 18 and went to work in the Castle Bromwich branch of Morrisons. “I worked in the bakery for two years, until I went to university. I really regret wasting those two years, because when I left university, it was that much later than it might have been. I graduated just at the moment of the credit crunch. I applied for my job in the bakery again after graduating, and they told me I was over-qualified. Living with my mum is not great. My room is big enough for a bed, and to stand up beside it, and that’s about it. But I can’t afford to move out. I contacted the careers adviser from university to ask him if I was doing anything wrong, and all he said was obvious things like making sure my CV was written properly.”

McCormack has become accustomed to doing small menial jobs for cash or food. “I’ve been building computers for friends, helping people move house, and washing cars for £5 a time. I’m booked to do three cars this weekend, and those people said they would recommend me to friends, so I might do more. I was so hopeful and excited about the prospects of studying archaeology, perhaps travelling while working at the same time. Or maybe going into the Civil Service and settling down. But as my degree progressed, I watched the world changing. When I went to Nottingham, the world offered everything. When I graduated, it was a shadow of itself. I’m being forced to do the type of jobs my parents did, and I hate it.”

Zahra Aramfar

After she graduated from the University of Manchester in 2005 with a 2:2 in economics and social sciences, Aramfar, 25, entered bar and restaurant management. She worked her way up the ladder, but gave it up to go travelling. In retrospect, that was badly timed. When she returned to Britain, the recession was under way and she was unable to pick up where she left off. She now has a job sorting clothes in the stock room of a high-street fashion store. “I take clothes out of plastic bags, open boxes, steam clothes, and put them out on the shop floor.” She earns £7 an hour.

“I live with my mum in Bristol, because I can’t afford anything else. It can get very depressing, but as much as this is a terrible situation, I try to make the best of it. I know people who are on the dole. That keeps me going, a little bit: realising there are people worse off than myself.” Has she applied for anything else? “Since October, I have applied for 100 jobs. I have had a couple of replies, but no interviews. I worry that my brain is dying. I feel that doing this menial work is killing a bit of my brain. I do 35 hours a week, and you can be sure I count them. I was caught unawares by the recession. But most people in retail have had their hours cut massively, so in another sense, I feel quite lucky.”

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