‘The cart has at last caught up with the horse’; great news for job seekers in August’s Labour Market Statistics

Bristol, the home of Sanderson’s head office, is the 10th best city in the UK to find a job, according to the Staffing Industry Analysts. With 0.48 job seekers per vacancy, Bristol is one of the most independent and stable cities outside of London.

For Bristol and the rest of the UK, employment continued to rise, following the general direction the labour market has been growing in since late 2011. There were 30.61 million people in work in September, which is 74,000 more than for April 2014. Usually, high levels of job creation, as we are experiencing now, are accompanied by low wages. However, as employment has risen in recent months, so have real wages ('real' wage is income expressed in terms of purchasing power as opposed to actual money received). This is the first time that UK real wages have grown since the financial crisis, and the first time that wage growth has exceeded the rate of inflation.

The salary gap between the highest and lowest paid regions has significantly reduced over the past year. For instance the gap between London, the highest paid region, and Northern Ireland, the lowest paid, has shrunk by £1,718 since August 2013. However, this may be more to do with London's slow wage growth compared to the regional cities. Alexandra Jones, CEO of Centre for Cities, said that “we are failing to make the most of cities’ economic potential”, and advised that "devolving more funding and powers to UK cities so they can generate more of their own income and play to their different strengths will be critical to ensuring this is a sustainable, job-rich recovery". The Minister for Cities, Greg Clark, pointed out that"in the last two years the UK has created over a million jobs, of which over 750,000 are outside London".

In terms of candidate availability, the number of both permanent and contract available workers has fallen further, maintaining the upward pressure on pay. The pay pressure is being fed by a combination of ‘strong demand for staff and shortages of suitable candidates’, according to data collected by REC Corporate and KPMG. They found that around 32% of consultants reported higher salaries last month, with just 3% reporting a fall. According to APSCo, there has been ‘a loss of momentum for jobs and sectors that performed remarkably well over the past year’, as permanent vacancies begin to plateau (rising at their slowest rate in 10 months) and temporary placements almost stall. Based on current growth forecasts, there are now predicted to be over 1 million vacancies available by the end of 2014.