Wages set to rise at last as the number of vacancies outstrips volume of jobseekers
Britain’s recovery has pulled so many unemployed workers into jobs that there are now more vacancies than jobseekers, for the first time since the financial crisis struck, jobs website Adzuna said today.
As a result, employers are increasing the wages on offer to new staff, and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) expects pay rises to outstrip inflation over the coming years.
Adzuna found 936,596 advertised vacancies in October, up 3.4 per cent on the month and up 25.1 per cent on the year. By contrast, the number of registered jobseekers fell from 924,315 in September to 887,771 in October.
At the same time, the average advertised salary has risen 4.3 per cent, outstripping the 1.3 per cent price rise over the year.
Graduate salaries are up 15.7 per cent on the year, followed 10.4 per cent for manufacturing and 10.2 per cent in IT.
In the economy overall, the IFS expects modest real pay rises over the coming year.
“Our projections show that median income is likely to have fallen again relative to CPI in 2013-14, but might now be growing [slowly] in real terms,” said the IFA analysts.
“This means that we expect median household income in 2015-16 to be roughly where it was in 2010-11 [after adjusting for CPI inflation], though still about three per cent below its 2007-08 level.”