Welsh language skills now feature in more than four in ten job advertisements across Wales, according to Careers Wales, placing the language firmly within the landscape of graduate employment for students planning to live and work in the country after university. Careers Wales reports that Welsh is listed as either essential or desirable in around 43 per cent of job postings nationwide, equating to more than 30,000 advertised roles. While the majority of jobs do not require Welsh, the figure highlights how frequently the language now appears in employment criteria, particularly in public-facing, publicly funded and community-based sectors.
The data does not allow for direct comparison with previous years, as Careers Wales does not publish historical breakdowns of Welsh language requirements in job advertisements. However, it does demonstrate that Welsh already occupies a significant and visible position within the Welsh labour market, a shift that carries particular weight for students making long-term decisions about where to build their lives after graduation. One factor shaping those decisions is Wales’s longer-standing pattern of outward migration linked to employment opportunities.
In written evidence submitted to the UK Parliament’s Welsh Affairs Committee in 2023, research examining the experiences of young people in rural Wales found that ‘around four in ten respondents expected to be living outside Wales within five years’, with employment prospects identified as a key reason for anticipating a move away. The evidence noted that many young people felt they would need to leave Wales to access suitable jobs or career progression, despite strong personal and cultural ties to the country. Seen in this context, the growing visibility of Welsh language skills in employment can be understood not as a barrier, but as part of a broader effort to make Wales professionally viable for those who wish to stay, return, or move home after studying elsewhere.
Embedding Welsh more firmly into working life has the potential to support both Welsh speakers and learners in building careers without having to leave the country. This prominence in the labour market exists alongside a contrasting picture within higher education. Across Welsh universities, around 13 percent of students are recorded as fluent Welsh speakers, with the majority completing their degrees entirely through the medium of English.
Welsh-medium study remains limited, meaning many students encounter Welsh language expectations for the first time only when entering the graduate job market. This gap is not necessarily a reflection of student disengagement from Wales. Many students who come to Cardiff from elsewhere go on to form strong personal and professional ties to the city, seeing it as home and intending to stay long after their studies end.
However, higher education data suggests that while students’ attachment to Wales often deepens over time, Welsh language acquisition does not always align with those intentions. National population figures reflect a similar imbalance. The 2021 Census recorded that 17.8 percent of people in Wales reported being able to speak Welsh, while later survey estimates suggest the figure may be higher.
Welsh remains a minority language nationally, even as its institutional and professional presence continues to expand. The growing role of Welsh in employment is rooted in historical context. For much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Welsh was actively marginalised through education and governance, contributing to a long-term decline in everyday use.
Practices such as the Welsh Not, which punished children for speaking Welsh in schools, reinforced the idea that the language lacked legitimacy beyond the home or cultural spaces. Contemporary language policy is widely understood as a corrective to that history. The Welsh Government’s long-term strategy, ‘Cymraeg 2050’, aims to increase the number of Welsh speakers to one million by the middle of the century and to expand the use of Welsh in everyday and professional life.
Higher education is identified as a key site for achieving this goal, both by supporting Welsh-speaking students and by encouraging new learners to acquire the language. From this perspective, the growing presence of Welsh in graduate employment is often viewed as a positive development. It signals that Welsh is no longer confined to symbolic or cultural roles, but recognised as a living, working language.
For Welsh-speaking students, this can translate into greater opportunity to use their language beyond the classroom. For students who do not currently speak Welsh but are committed to staying in Wales, it reframes language learning as a form of integration rather than a test of belonging. Importantly, Welsh language requirements are rarely absolute.
Where Welsh is listed in job advertisements, it is often described as ‘desirable’ rather than ‘essential’, and many employers offer support for learning the language once in post. Alongside this, adult learning provision has expanded significantly. Data from the National Centre for Learning Welsh shows that 18,805 learners completed Welsh language courses in 2023-24, the highest number on record, indicating growing demand among adults learning the language later in life.
For students who arrive in Wales without Welsh, the data points towards a practical reality rather than a closed door. Welsh is not an all-or-nothing requirement, but an increasingly valuable skill within the Welsh labour market. For those who are proud to call Cardiff home and see their futures here, learning Welsh can become part of investing in that place over time – not a prerequisite for staying, but a way of participating more fully in its working life.
What remains less clear is whether universities are doing enough to align language provision with student aspiration. As increasing numbers of graduates plan to remain in Wales after completing their degrees, access to Welsh language learning becomes less about cultural encouragement and more about equitable preparation for life and work here. The data suggests that Welsh matters, not as a barrier, but as a shared opportunity that institutions, not just individuals, must help make accessible.