According to Adzuna’s latest data, the average salary advertised in the UK is now over PS40,000.
According to the UK Job Market Report, the average salary in December 2024 was PS40.623, an increase of just over 1.5% from the previous month. This is the highest ever recorded.
Adzuna reported that salaries in December 2024 will be up 7.2% from December 2023. This is due to the demand for highly-skilled staff and employers’ reluctance to hire.
Job seekers in December faced a challenging recruitment environment, as the number of job openings fell by 4.0%, to 844 152. After a short increase in November, this was the lowest annual decline since November 2023.
The number of job seekers per vacancy increased to 2.05 from 1.96 in Novembre. The average length of job postings has increased from 32.8 to 34.1.
The legal firms filled jobs in the fastest time, at 31 days. This was followed by administrative (31.6) and real estate (31.9).
The longest time to fill a domestic help and cleaning job was 38.7 days. This was followed by energy and oil (38.5) then healthcare and nursing (37).
In December, employers who did not disclose salaries in their job posts decreased to 53.71 %. Adzuna discovered that 2024 is the worst year ever for salary transparency. Only one month (February) had more jobs with salary details than without.
Trade and Construction and Teaching both saw increases of 6.6% and 4,3% in terms of vacancies.
The slight declines in professional services such as accounting, finance, and legal (down 2.3%), consulting (down 2.2%), and consultancy (down 3.4%) offset these increases.
Retail jobs fell by nearly a fifth in December after increasing in November. The number of jobs in the hospitality sector also dropped sharply by 12.7%.
The teaching profession has seen the biggest increase in comparison to December 2023, with a 25.7% year-on-year rise.
The majority of sectors saw a drop in annual vacancies. Retail fell 41.4%; PR, advertising, and marketing dropped 38.4%; energy, oil, and gas declined 36.9%, and graduate jobs were down 24.4%.
Adzuna reports that the average annual salary in most sectors increased compared to November. Only administration roles saw a 0.1% drop.
Legal was the only industry to experience a decrease in salaries on an annual basis. The average salary fell by 3.5% from December 2023 to January 2019.
The regions that saw the highest growth in advertised salaries were the West Midlands, North-east England and Northern Ireland.
London and South-East England continued to be on the bottom of the table. In December, south-west England surpassed London with a 5.7% increase.
Andrew Hunter, Adzuna’s co-founder, said that job seekers who had hoped for a continuation of the growth of available roles after November’s rebound will be disappointed as vacancies dropped again in December.
The average salary advertised in the UK has now reached over PS40,000, the first time we have tracked the UK job market since 2016.
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