Guildford: One of The Best Towns In The UK For Job Seekers

Published on: 14 Dec, 2012
Updated on: 21 Dec, 2012

Plenty of Guildford shoppers even on a wet and cold December day – Photo John Schluter

“Guildford is, fortunately, in an economic bubble”, said Cllr David Wright (Con, Tillingbourne) at Thursday evening’s (December 14) full council meeting and a recent report on the UK jobs market would appear to bear this out.

A study conducted by Adzuna, who publish a national job search website, analysed its comprehensive search index of over 500,000 job vacancies to reveal IT, Engineering and Finance job sectors have been the most buoyant in 2012 with average salaries increasing by 6% over the past 6 months.

Guildford is one of the clear pockets of strength to have emerged in the UK job market in 2012 behind. The town has only 0.7 applicants per vacancy, which ranks it as third in a list of best towns to find a job. Only Aberdeen (0.5 job seekers per vacancy), and Cambridge are ahead. Hull has been the most difficult place to find a job this year with an average rate of 55 job seekers per vacancy.

The average 2012 salary of £32, 539 on offer in Guildford is also one of the best, behind only London, Aberdeen, Cambridge and Slough. Preston is the worst paying with £25,718 p.a.

EA Games in Onslow Street a world leading IT company in the gaming sector – Photo John Schluter

As well as Guildford’s location, 30 miles from London and within the most prosperous South East region of England, a major factor behind Guildford’s performance would appear to be the significant proportion of IT jobs in the town. In the UK the IT sector created over 1M jobs in 2012, says Adzuna’s Jobs Review of the Year.

The report also contained a summary outlook for 2013.

2013 Outlook

The number of job seekers for every job in the UK looks set to continue to fall in the first half of 2013 (to 3.1 job seekers for every job), but this will be largely down to the number of part time jobs in the market.
The Part-Time sector has bolstered UK unemployment levels in the latter half of 2012 and, if the pattern continues, the number of part time jobs available in the UK will increase by 4% in Q1 2013.
Engineering and Energy & Oil sectors look set to perform well in 2013 across the UK with the number of jobs advertised projected to increase by 5% in Q1
The job opportunity North / South divide doesn’t look like it will improve in 2013. Cities like Hull, Sunderland and Bradford will become increasingly competitive.
While manufacturing job stock has stagnated at a UK level in 2012, Q4 saw this sector performing well in the East Midlands. If the pattern continues, the number of manufacturing jobs will grow by up to 10% in this part of the county next year.
North East and North West regions will witness 4.5% growth for Engineering and Energy industries.
Regions heavily dependent on the public sector such as Northern Ireland and Scotland are likely to be worst affected by jobs cuts and pay freezes in 2013.

Andrew Hunter, Co-Founder of Adzuna, said “Because we list nearly every UK job ad in our search engine, we’re able to see how the employment market is performing right across the country. Based on the 2012 data, we expect unemployment to continue to fall in 2013 with technology & engineering sectors performing the strongest in the first half of the year.”