Despite December being a quieter month for recruitment, average salaries across the UK increased by 1.1 per cent last month, when comparing data with November 2016. This is according to the latest statistics from the UK’s leading independent job board, CV-Library.
The data found that key cities saw promising hikes in pay, when comparing both year-on-year and month-on-month data. In fact, the cities which saw above-average salary growth included, Cardiff – up 17 per cent, Manchester – up 5.8 per cent and Birmingham – up 4.8 per cent.
Furthermore, some key sectors also witnessed above average increases in pay compared to 2015, including: legal (up 13 per cent), property (up 8.2 per cent), manufacturing (up 7.6 per cent), recruitment (up 7.2 per cent) and IT (up 5.4 per cent).
Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library comments, ‘It’s positive to witness increases in salaries across some of the UK’s major cities and sectors last month, with the likes of Cardiff, Liverpool and Manchester seeing particularly strong growth.
The fact that pay has jumped so significantly in certain areas is a nice indication that businesses across the nation are continuing to work hard to attract the very best talent, despite December being a quieter month for hiring.’
Alongside this, the findings reveal that job vacancies were down by 9 per cent when compared to December 2015, with applications also dropping by 1 per cent. But while this could be perceived negatively, it is not unusual for this time of year, and could explain why salaries increased last month, as businesses pushed hard to attract active candidates ahead of the New Year rush.
Biggins concludes, ‘We always expected applications and job vacancies to drop last month – December is one of the quietest months in the recruitment market so the fact that there was a widespread dip in candidate and business appetite is not unusual.
‘The good news is that organisations are showing signs of investing in their current and future workforce and there is no doubt that these numbers will pick up dramatically this month.’
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