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South East cities named 'best places to find a job'

Cities in the South East have been listed amongst the best places to find a job in the UK by a report carried out by online job board Adzuna.

Winchester, Reading, Maidstone and Guildford all rank in the top ten cities to find a job, while the North faces fierce competition for jobs.

Salford, The Wirral and Sunderland are listed as the top three ‘worst cities to find a job’.

However, Adzuna reports salaries in the North are increasing faster than in other areas of the UK, with salaries in the North East and Yorkshire up 13.7% and 12.7% respectively.

In the UK, competition for jobs halved over 2014 to hit a new record low of 0.85 jobseekers for every advertised job in December 2014.

In the South East, salaries rose 7.7% in 2014, with an average annual wage of £32,647.

Jobs in the administration sector have seen the biggest salary boost, increasing 19% to an average of £23,528 for the year.

The Oil & Gas sector has suffered the most, with the average salary dropping 1.9% in 2014 to £46,168.

Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said: “Administration jobs are the vanguard of the jobs market. In tough times, they’re the first casualties of shrinking business. Now that things have turned around, this healthy annual growth is a sign that we’re making our way out of hostile economic territory.

“This is a much-deserved pay bump for the employees that keep such a vast range of enterprises ticking over – a sign that we’re heading back to the safer havens of prosperity we’ve gone without for some time.

“Supporting roles in administration and customer services have fought hard to keep up during the recession. But with an unflappable core of manufacturing and construction driving the labour market forwards, it was almost inevitable that businesses would need to start attracting talented support staff.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ellen Forster .