Salaries rise at fastest rate in three years

Christmas hiring is starting to breathe life back into Britain’s job market, as annual salaries rise at the fastest rate in three years, figures suggest.
The average advertised salary stood at £39,234 last month, up 6 per cent compared with last year and the highest increase since April 2021.
Salary growth comes as competition heats up among jobseekers. There were 861,000 vacancies in Britain’s labour market at the end of October, according to the job search engine Adzuna, marking a 0.17 per cent drop compared with September. It means there are now 2.08 job hunters per vacancy, the website found, its highest level since June 2021.
Andrew Hunter, the co-founder of Adzuna, said that while 2024 had a challenging start the second half of the year had shown signs of “recovery and resilience”.
“This October, we saw the first positive six-month change in vacancy numbers,” he said. “Driven by preparations for the busy Christmas shopping season, sectors like trade and construction and retail are ramping up hiring.”
The average duration of job postings on Adzuna is now 39.5 days, which the job site said reflected a tougher job-seeking environment.
British businesses now face the twin effect of rising salary expectations and more expensive national insurance contributions. Labour announced last month that the rate of employer NICs would increase by 1.2 percentage points to 15 per cent from April, while the earnings threshold at which employers start paying contributions will fall from £9,100 to £5,000.
The retail industry is expected to be hit particularly hard by the changes, as supermarkets, pubs and restaurant chains typically employ large numbers of lower-paid workers.
However, Christmas hiring meant there was a sharp rise in advertised vacancies in the trade and construction industry in October, with new postings rising by 8.6 per cent, Adzuna said. In retail, they grew by 6 per cent, followed by hospitality and catering at 1 per cent and travel also at 1 per cent.
The hardest hit area for hiring was in sales, where job postings fell by 9.8 per cent last month. However, job adverts for salespeople were 6.5 per cent higher compared with six months ago. IT jobs fell by 9.6 per cent, while energy, oil and gas dropped by 8.4 per cent.
A separate report by PwC, the accountancy firm, found that there had been a surge in “green” job adverts. It defines these as jobs that seek to either produce or provide environmentally friendly products and services or those that adapt work processes to become less carbon-intensive or use fewer natural resources.
Overall there has been a 9 per cent rise in green job adverts in the past year, PwC found. In London, green job adverts grew by 30 per cent to 58,500. Scotland has the highest proportion of job adverts considered green, the consultancy said, at 5.6 per cent, or 28,700 vacancies.
Carl Sizer, of PwC, said that the surge in green job openings while the wider job market contracted underscored the increasing demand for green skills. “While this demand is a great signal of intent and opportunity as the UK transitions to net zero, it’s also a sign that green skills are in short supply,” he said. “Given the government’s new increased targets to deliver clean power by 2030, the skills challenge is only going to increase.”