Jobs and pay in the accounting sector have continuously stayed above the national average, confirming a strong job market.

Lee Biggins, founder and managing director of CV-Library, comments: ‘It’s fantastic to witness the job market growing at such an impressive rate year-on-year in the accounting sector. With businesses keen to attract only the best candidates to their roles, it’s positive to see that companies are pushing their salaries up in order to offer competitive pay packages to the talented recruits.

‘With more and more organisations putting out job adverts, competition to attract skilled workers is fierce. The offering of strong pay packages is clearly one tactic that accounting organisations are using in an effort to stay one step ahead of their competition.’

However, despite year-on-year growth, month-on-month data shows that applications have dropped by 9.2% with total candidate applications falling by 9.7%, suggesting that despite a higher salary and more job offers applications are not keeping up pace.

Biggins said: ‘It’s unsurprising to see application rates dropping off after January in the accounting industry; the mantra of ‘New Year, new me’ means January is traditionally one of the busiest periods for recruiters, with job applications vastly increasing in number.

‘The challenge for businesses now is to tap into the talent pool while it’s still available. As a result, we’re seeing increasingly fierce activity from companies, with job postings and salaries on the rise.’

Average salaries in the automotive industry has increased the most year-on year at 9.1% with the education sector’s salaries only growing 2.2%.

Job vacancies in manufacturing have increased by an enormous 36% but vacancies in sales and retail have only grown by 1-1.2%.