Advertised salaries have fallen to an 11-month low, as growth in the workforce is driven by lower-paid roles and part-time positions, according to the latest UK Job Market Report from Adzuna.co.uk.

The average advertised UK salary was £33,696 in June, down 0.9% from £34,002 in May, the fourth consecutive month seeing increasingly steep month-on-month falls. Salaries have now reached their lowest point since £33,873 in July 2014.

An increase in lower paid and part-time roles has factored into the advertised salaries stagnation. June saw 1,092,030 available UK vacancies, 3.2% higher than the 1,058,425 recorded in May, and 12.8% above the 968,273 six months before, in December 2014.

But the National Living Wage initiative will help boost a significant number of these new roles. The initiative would affect more than 112,000 currently advertised vacancies, meaning 10% of the vacancies currently on offer will benefit. Some 17% of these affected vacancies are in the South East, compared to just 4% in the North East.

Sectors most affected by the National Living Wage

Competition for jobs has fallen to a new record low. There were just 0.67 jobseekers per advertised vacancy in June, 6.6% lower than 0.72 in May, and almost half the 1.21 figure seen in June 2014.

Biggest improvers – UK regions by average salary

Although the Office for National Statistics has reported that the unemployment rate has risen by 0.1% month-on-month.  Adzuna’s forward-looking data suggests this is a temporary blip, and that unemployment will fall away again in the summer.

According to Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna: “The solid growth in vacancies is the dominant backdrop behind this unemployment uptick. It may even be a sign of greater mobility: as more and more vacancies open up, employees are confident enough to temporarily leave their current job in order to dedicate their efforts to finding a new one. Competition for jobs is continually falling away as the British economy starts to spread its wings again. In that context, this minor fluctuation gives us little cause for concern”.

“Likewise, weakening advertised salaries signal an increase in the number of available entry-level, part-time and lower-paid positions. While the National Living Wage should prop up the salaries of those unfairly affected by falling wages, there is definitely still plenty of room for improvement. The new baseline is weighted for London – and that’s the extent of it. As his Northern Powerhouse programme proves, the economic recovery has not been evenly spread across the UK – but neither is all our success concentrated on the capital.

Despite salary growth in the north, there is still a clear gap between north and south in terms of competition for jobs. Competition remains stubbornly high in areas like Sunderland, with as many as 4.87 jobseekers per vacancy – over seven times the national average. However, Manchester has cemented its place in the top ten best cities to find a job, with just 0.31 jobseekers per vacancy.

Andrew Hunter concludes: “Manchester is one of the exceptions to the rule, buoyed by a thriving professional services industry which has created many new jobs in areas like law, finance and consulting. Many of our northern cities are making a comeback and competition for jobs is falling fast – albeit not to the same extent that we see in Cambridge.

“The struggle isn’t in pulling these recovering cities up to scratch – it’s working out how to better support those places where businesses are still struggling to flourish and provide opportunities to the local area, cities like Sunderland and Hull. Manchester might be the wunderkind of the Chancellor’s ‘Northern Powerhouse’ scheme, but it’s important not to let one shining example mask a more deeply-rooted problem.”