Graduate prospects, like all job prospects, are certainly a mess and most disheartening for our young people.
However, this seems like a silly click bait article. It doesn't tell us much really with the figures it has quoted. It's given us the decrease in numbers of loans being paid back but not told us the total home student numbers from each year at each university to be able to compare. There could be several other reasons for the decrease.
Perhaps the quality of Russell group students has got worse and recruitment blind policies means the top students from other universities are getting more high paid jobs.
Perhaps the Russell group universities have more students who haven't taken loans out in recent years, or in the case of Imperial, prioritised overseas fees and decreased the number of home students accepted on their courses, so there will be fewer graduating who took a loan.
Or perhaps, since COVID and travel Tik Tok reels, more young people have gone traveling after graduating and aren't in a hurry to settle down. The 2020/2021 A level students typically didn't take gap years as travel was restricted, so might be more burnt out and looking for some different experiences.
Or, perhaps they are in jobs but they are lower paid starting salaries so they haven't started to pay back loans yet, but in a few years they will be okay.