Where does your city rank in the UK salary table?
This week the ONS released data that ranked each town and city that has at least 135,000 inhabitants in the UK based on the average salary paid to its workers. The results although expected in some areas do throw up some surprises with the lowest paid town being Southend based in the south east only 40 miles from London. So is there still a north south divide when it comes to pay? The answer is unfortunately yes as 65% of the towns and cities in the top 20 are south of Birmingham.
We know that wages can differ depending on your post code for example a PA working in North Wales can expect to be paid less than a PA working in say London but even call centre workers in Wigan are paid less than their counter parts in Crawley when the jobs are identical.
London will always distort the numbers slightly and so too the surrounding areas like Reading and Milton Keynes which continue to attract skilled workers and large employers who prefer to be close to the capital without the expensive rents, but what impact will statistics like this have on young people or those skilled workers looking to increase their earnings? It’s no secret that over the past 10 years areas of the UK with large employers and higher salary opportunities are seeing a migration of talent, places like Wigan, Barnsley and Doncaster all feature in the bottom 15 and have some of the lowest shares of residents educated to degree level
Clearly there is more work that central government and local councils need to do to attract companies and in turn retain and grow the local talent in their area and with multibillion pound investment schemes planned around the Northern Powerhouse initiative this will surely help.
Highest and lowest wages per week in UK’s largest towns and cities*
London: £727
Reading: £655
Crawley: £633
Milton Keynes: £619
Cambridge: £609
Slough: £606
Oxford: £600
Edinburgh: £598
Aberdeen: £597
Derby: £595
Aldershot: £588
Southampton: £579
Luton: £571
Swindon: £560
Bristol: £547
National Average: £539
Leeds: £533
Coventry: £532
Birmingham: £527
Glasgow: £526
Gloucester: £526
Portsmouth: £520
Belfast: £514
Liverpool: £512
Manchester: £512
Warrington: £510
Northampton: £508
Ipswich: £506
Cardiff: £505
Dundee: £503
Bournemouth: £503
Basildon: £501
Newcastle: £501
York: £501
Blackpool: £500
Exeter: £499
Peterborough: £497
Telford: £497
Brighton: £496
Chatham: £494
Blackburn: £488
Nottingham: £486
Sunderland: £484
Wakefield: £483
Leicester: £480
Preston: £480
Middlesbrough: £477
Sheffield: £474
Newport: £473
Mansfield: £472
Plymouth: £467
Hull: £466
Swansea: £464
Burnley: £459
Stoke: £455
Bradford: £455
Worthing: £455
Barnsley: £453
Norwich: £450
Doncaster: £447
Wigan: £436
Birkenhead: £428
Huddersfield: £424
Southend: £413
*The Centre for Cities data covers built-up urban areas with a population of 135,000 or more
