The Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on Master Graduates' Employability

The COVID-19 pandemic brought the global economy to a near standstill. The scale of the coronavirus and the associated losses have left many countries facing a humanitarian, social and economic crisis. The main objective of the research presented in this article was to determine to what extent the support provided within the activities of the Motokadra project (2018-2020) within the framework of the Operational Programme Knowledge Education Development, funded by the European Social Fund, enabled its participants to adapt to the labour market conditions during the COVID-19 pandemic. The project participants were full-time Master's students within the faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Silesian University of Technology. They formed the experimental group. The authors examined changes in the employability of the experimental group in the pre-pandemic and post-pandemic periods. The students in the experimental group represented several fields of study, which also allowed the authors to analyse which discipline appeared to be more resilient to the COVID-19 pandemic crisis and whether the profile of the discipline affected employability. The employability of graduates in the automotive industry was particularly examined. The results of the analyses allow us to conclude that the labour market crisis linked to the COVID-19 pandemic negatively affected the experimental group's employability level. Furthermore, it has been shown that the study of the automation and robotics discipline increases the chances of finding a job after graduation.