Cambridge, Guildford and Reading: These are the UK cities where getting a job is easiest
If you want to play the odds when going for a job, you might want to focus on some of the major satellite cities around London.
The cities with the highest number of jobs per applicant were found in the south of England. Cambridge had just 0.11 jobseekers per vacancy, while Guildford had 0.15.
People living in the north were more likely to experience competition when searching for jobs, according to job advertisement site Adzuna.
The cities with the highest number of jobseekers per vacancy were all found in the north of England. The highest competition for jobs was in Sunderland, Hull and Bradford, the data suggests.
Salford had one of the largest improvements compared with 2014, with people finding it almost 14-times easier to find employment than a year ago. There were 2.19 jobseekers per available vacancy in 2015 – down from 30.42 in 2014.
Competition falls to post-recession low
There were more vacancies than jobseekers during April in 32 of the top 50 UK cities.
The number of jobseekers fell under 800,000 for the first time since the recession, as competition for jobs fell to 0.77 jobseekers per advertised vacancy
Advertised vacancies grow by a quarter between April 2014 and 2015, hitting 1,033,435.
"We need the workforce capable of taking advantage of the recovery"
Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, commented on the figures:
The number of jobseekers is falling while advertised vacancies are ballooning. This could be a warning sign that our workforce lacks the skills necessary to fill up many of the new jobs appearing. The recovery certainly has the capacity to progress further and faster – but at the moment there’s a disconnect between our abilities and our economic climate. It’s like standing outside your recently fixed up car, tuned up and ready to go, only to realise you’ve lost the keys.
If we’re going to get behind the wheel of this recovery, we need to unlock the potential of our workforce, with more emphasis on the diversity of available jobs if only people are aware of them and willing to train themselves. This change could be led by the government, but part of it is a culture-shift. We have the recovery we deserve – now we need to build a workforce capable of taking advantage of it.
Wage growth highest in the north east
While competition was highest in the north, it was also the region with the higher than average wage growth. Advertised wages grew 12.2 per cent in Yorkshire and the Humber between 2014 and 2015, the highest rate in the UK.
North East England and the East Midlands followed, with wage growth of 9.4 and 8.8 per cent respectively.
Northern Ireland and Scotland had the lowest increases in advertised wages across the UK, with Northern Ireland having 3.9 per cent growth between 2014 and 2015.
London’s year-on-year salary growth, at 4.9 per cent, is below the 6.9 per cent UK average.
Despite London's lower than average wage growth, the capital still has the highest salaries overall, at £41,448. Scotland had the next highest, with an average salary of £32,807 north of the border.
As well as having the slowest growth, Northern Ireland also had the lowest salaries in the country.
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