The NW pay divide revealed

RESEARCH from ManpowerGroup has revealed there is a £15,000 divide between the areas in the North West with the best and the worst average pay for workers.

Scroll down to see the North West pay league infographic

Top of the heap is the Manchester metropolitan borough of Trafford where people earn £37,700 a year and bottom is Blackpool, where the average is just £22,300.

This was one of findings of the ManpowerGroup Pay League – a new series of regional insights into UK pay trends.

Its analysis is based on the Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings from the Office of National Statistics.

Average annual pay for people living in the region rose 0.4% between 2013 and 2014 – slower than the rate of increase in the UK as whole, where pay rose 0.6%. At an average of £29,000, annual pay in the North West is £3,000 lower than the UK average of £33,500.

However, the North West’s major cities have seen a sharp increase in average earnings.

Manchester and Liverpool have seen full-time pay rise by more than 3% since 2013, four times faster than the national average and around seven times faster than the North West region as a whole.

The cities are almost neck and neck in the pay stakes but, with average annual full-time pay of £29,200 compared with Manchester’s £28,900, Liverpool is slightly ahead.

Looking towards the North West’s less well-populated areas, ManpowerGroup’s analysis reveals that Ribble Valley and Copeland in Cumbria – two predominantly rural areas in the north of the region – have the second and third highest average levels of pay overall.
 
Along with Trafford, they are the only parts of the region where average annual full-time pay tops £37,000.
 
The impressive pay in these areas underlines the impact that a single major employer can have on a local economy. BAE Systems is a major employer in Ribble Valley, while Sellafield nuclear reprocessing plant is in Copeland.

With production industries employing nearly 370,000 people in the North West, more than in any other region in the UK, manufacturing is a big driver of prosperity and pay growth in the region.

Full-time pay in the North West’s manufacturing sector rose by 3.1% over the year to £32,400, far outstripping the overall increase in pay across the region as well as the UK as a whole.

Operations manager at Manpower, Greg Hollis, said: “Manufacturing has long been a key part of the North West’s jobs economy, and the increasingly skilled nature of manufacturing work has had a profound impact on pay in the region. As the industrial processes carried out by employers in the region have become more complex, so the salaries have risen in line with the level of specialist skills required.”

ManpowerGroup’s analysis has revealed a marked and increasing pay gap between the region’s men and women.

Average pay per hour for men in full-time work rose 0.9% to £15.47 whereas women in full-time work saw their pay fall 0.1%, to £13.40. The growing pay divide means that men in full-time work are now paid on average 15% more per hour than women.

Hollis added: “One reason for this growing divide is that many of the roles and industries which have thrived in the region in recent years have traditionally been male-dominated so the sharp pay rises will be enjoyed by more men than women.
 
“This contrasts sharply with the pay fall we have reported for full-time workers in caring, leisure and other service occupations, which tend to employ a higher proportion of female workers. Workers in these sectors saw their pay decrease by 2.5% to £17,000.”

The infographic below shows the pay performance of each North West borough: