The average annual advertised salary in the UK hit a record high in January, according to the latest figures from job matching platform Adzuna.

The average salary went up by 1.45% month on month, and 7.02% compared to January 2024, it found, driven by salary jumps in the manufacturing and maintenance sectors.

The average advertised salary in January was £40,486, with private sector wages growing by 6.2% annually, and public sector pay up 4.7%. Salaries have outpaced inflation now for the past nine months, Adzuna said.

Maintenance salaries went up by 2.24% month-on-month and almost a fifth year-on-year, and manufacturing went up by 2.35% and 10.35% respectively.

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Other sectors with substantial annual increases included logistics and warehouse (up 17.72%), customer service (up 12.97%) and domestic help and cleaning (up 11.75%).

Job vacancies continued to trend downwards, with total numbers falling by 1.86% month-on-month and 4.49% annually to 828,467 in January 2025, the lowest January figure since 2021.

Twenty-one out of the 27 sectors tracked by Adzuna saw their monthly vacancy numbers drop. Retail vacancies were the worst hit, dropping by 16.23% in January after a 19% fall in December.

Vacancies in teaching jumped by 33.9%, and there were other increases in construction (up 22.9%) and legal (up 10.69%).

Adzuna found that the number of jobseekers per vacancy rose to 2.09, up from 2.01 in December 2024 and 1.81 in January 2024.

The average duration of job posts being open increased from 34.1 days to 35.2 days, with the legal sector taking the shortest time to fill jobs at 31.4 days.

Domestic help and cleaning jobs take the longest to fill, at 49.2 days, while healthcare and nursing also take more than 40 days.

The trend towards not disclosing salaries continues, with 53.9% of employers not showing pay levels compared to 46% who did.

Northern Ireland had the largest annual growth in salary, rising by 13.23%. London continues to have the highest regional average salary, however, at £46.923.

Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said that salary growth “reflects the increasing competition for talent in key sectors, even as overall hiring slows”.

“For jobseekers, this means adapting to a more competitive landscape, while for employers, attracting and retaining talent remains a challenge,” he said.

Adzuna’s figures reflect the findings shared by Indeed earlier this week, showing that hiring demand remained 15% below pre-pandemic levels in mid-February.

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