British advertised salaries fall but job ads pick up: Adzuna

LONDON (Reuters) – Advertised salaries in Britain hit their lowest level in six months in October, indicating easing inflation pressure, but a first rise in vacancies since June suggested a recovery in the labour market, a survey showed on Monday.

Job search website Adzuna said annual advertised salaries averaged 36,946 pounds ($46,038.41) last month, down 0.4% from September and taking the decline since April to 1.9%.

“Falling advertised salaries may not appear to be good news for jobseekers but it does signal that the menace of inflation is finally in retreat,” Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna said.

However, online job ads climbed 0.35% to 1.03 million adverts, the biggest month-on-month jump since June, helped by pre-Christmas hiring in sectors such as retail and warehousing.

The Bank of England has held interest rates at its last two meetings after 14 increases in a row. But it is closely watching for signs of inflation pressure in the jobs market.

Britain’s official budget forecasters warned last week price growth would be more persistent than it previously thought.

Employers have struggled to fill jobs in recent years after many workers left the labour market during the COVID-19 pandemic with Brexit also reducing the supply of candidates.

An official measure of vacancies, published earlier this month, showed vacancies hit a two-year low of 957,000 in the three months to October and near record wage growth cooled slightly from in the quarter to September.

Adzuna’s measure of the number of jobseekers per vacancy rose marginally and companies needed the least time to fill roles so far this year.

($1 = 0.8025 pounds)