Putting Student Workers on the Agenda

Posted on: Thursday, October 22nd, 2026

Students contribute to Greater Manchester’s economy long before they graduate. Across the city region, they keep shops, restaurants, pubs, hospitals and cultural venues running while developing skills employers increasingly look for in graduates. Yet, despite being a substantial part of the workforce, student workers often remain overlooked and underappreciated.

Paid work is no longer a ‘side hustle’ for a small proportion of students. It has now become the norm, and for many, a core part of student life. Nationally, the Higher Education Policy Institute found that 65% of full-time undergraduates are in paid employment during term-time. That is mirrored here in Greater Manchester, where 57.86% of University of Manchester students report being in some form of paid work, rising to 60.7% at Salford*.

This is why students as workers is now one of GMSP’s key priorities, and why we believe there’s so much left to do to support students undertaking employment across the region.

As Greater Manchester seeks to build an inclusive economy and retain more graduate talent, student work must be at the forefront of the agenda.

Why Are Students Working?

The honest answer, for most students, is that they have to. For many, employment during term-time is what’s closing the gap between the cost of living and the support available to cover it.

A student receiving the maximum maintenance loan outside of London gets £10,830 for one academic year. The average student gets closer to £7,590. Against that, the University of Manchester itself estimates annual living costs of around £15,030, including more than £8,000 a year on rent alone. This means that even those on the maximum loan face a shortfall of £350 per month, increasing to £620 for the average student.

At the same time, the average parental contribution has dropped to £146 per month, meaning more students are now relying on part-time work as their primary financial source.

Meanwhile, job vacancies in the UK are at a five-year low, with the country seeing 92,000 fewer part-time employees than before the pandemic. The consequences of this show up everywhere in the data. 61% of students nationally skip meals at least some of the time to save money, and 41% have considered dropping out because of money-related issues.

The Double Burden

HEPI found that students in employment work an average of nearly 14 hours a week on top of their course, taking their total weekly commitments to 44.2 hours, more than the national average for a full-time employee. However, at Salford in particular, almost a quarter of working students are doing significantly more than that, at 31 hours or more alongside full-time study*.

It is thus no surprise that Salford’s research found that student workers specifically identified part-time employment as having a negative impact on their ability to do well on their course*. Students with dependants, commuter students and international students, who are often further from the support of family and can find the UK labour market harder to navigate, tend to feel this hardest.

Crucially, none of this is about students choosing not to prioritise their studies. Students want the flexibility to reduce their hours in exam periods, to travel home during the holidays, or to step back when things at uni get difficult, precisely so they can protect their degree. Often, though, there is simply not the right support in place to effectively balance both.

Where the Good employment charter comes in

GMSP sees the Greater Manchester Good Employment Charter as central to addressing this problem. The charter is Greater Manchester’s voluntary scheme for employers to demonstrate good practice across areas such as secure work, pay, recruitment and health and wellbeing. Importantly, because the charter goes further than the legal requirements, it can be directly shaped around what students specifically need from employment.

The Employment Rights Act 2025 has already moved the floor upward, introducing day one sick pay, the right to request guaranteed hours and proper notice for shift changes. However, the word ‘students’ only appeared once in the Act, leaving some of its protections poorly suited to the realities of student life.

Proposed arrangements for guaranteed-hours contracts, for example, don’t account for the fact that a student’s working pattern is built around a timetable that changes every semester. More broadly, the legislation offers little recognition of term-time employment as a distinct and recurring form of work. Organisations like the CIPD have warned that blanket reforms along these lines risk undermining the flexibility that students, among others, actually rely on.

GMSP believes the Good Employment Charter is exactly where such tensions can begin to be resolved, introducing unique criteria for student workers that recognise that flexibility for one student can create uncertainty and instability for another.

As the charter expands, we want student-specific flexibility built into its flexible work standard, including guaranteed time off during exams and holidays. We also want a minimum payment expectation for placement and internship schemes, so that unpaid work stops being the default route into experience. And we want employers signed up to the charter to actively recognise and value the skills students bring from part-time work when they recruit graduates.

Done right, the charter has the potential to make Greater Manchester a national leader in how it supports student workers.

Why this matters for GM

Greater Manchester retains only around 40% of its graduates after they finish studying. If we want students to build a life here after graduation, how they’re treated as workers while they’re studying has to be part of that story.

Getting student employment right isn’t a side issue alongside the likes of housing, transport, health or safety; it’s woven through them all. A student who can’t cover their rent without working over 30 hours a week isn’t just under financial pressure, they’re under pressure across every part of their university experience.

That’s why GMSP is making students as workers a key priority, and why we will keep pushing for the Good Employment Charter, and the employers who sign up to it, to work for students as much as it works for everyone else.

Students in Greater Manchester are making a real and ongoing contribution to this city’s economy. They deserve recognition not just as learners and future employees, but as workers who are already contributing today.

*Reference- Salford SU (2025), “Working Students: Employment, hours, sectors and wellbeing among Salford SU members”.