Britain sees blue collar workers turning white

Adecco today announces the findings from its Salary Survey 2004. The research shows office based and commercial work in Britain is continuing to generate rises in salaries above inflation, while wages for industrial positions are beginning to fall behind. Top jobs for salary rises over the year were specialist accountants, team secretaries and junior secretaries.

The Salary Survey collects data on commercial and industrial positions from Adecco’s 350 strong branch network across the UK and Ireland. Salaries for various positions, such as secretaries, drivers, office managers, accounts personnel or warehouse operatives are compared on a yearly basis, with the companies involved representing a cross section of UK industry. The prominent findings show,

* Money chasers - specialist accounts clerks, who deal with financial payments top the scale for salary raises, with an increase of 12% in average salary since 2003

* Commercial cleans up - commercial positions, such as PA, office managers, accountants or secretaries saw average rises in salary of 4% across all sectors apart from sales

* Industrial followers - fork lift truck drivers and warehouse operatives lead the way in the industrial sector with pay rises of 3%

* Location, location, location - Northern Ireland had the highest increase in salary over the year with a rise of 12% for commercial positions. People living north of London saw their wages drop by 6.5%

Richard Macmillan, MD from Adecco comments, The UK market has for sometime seen a trend towards the service sector. The rise in salaries of commercial jobs this year is a reflection of a change in the labour market. Salaries can rise for a variety of reasons, but there is a growing demand across the country for skilled secretarial and accounts personnel. This is not to say that the bottom is falling out of the industrial sector, but salaries are not rising at quite the same level.

Overall salaries across the UK are rising as a result of steady economic growth. As with any growing economy we are starting to see a salaries gap appearing between salaries for service based work and industrial jobs. The extent of this gap and its impact on working patterns remains to be seen, but the data supports the continuation of a white collar economy.

Richard continues, As the demographic of the working population changes and the general level of skills and education in the country develops we are likely to see a change in the jobs and salaries. Workers in the past who might have filled blue collar jobs are now employed in traditionally white collar positions. The economy benefits from higher skilled workers, whilst employees see an increase in annual income.