The fight for IT talent was fierce during Q3 of 2015 with cities outside of London battling to compete with the capital, posing the idea that IT graduates no longer need to restrict themselves to only working in London, but can now find roles across the country.

Research found from the latest Tech Cities Job Watch; a quarterly report on the UK’s IT hiring trends, analyzed more than 52,000 IT roles that were advertised in Britain between July and September 2015.

London is no longer center stage

The research revealed that a number of jobs advertised in London during Q3 dropped by 8% to 35,610, but interestingly, cities such as Manchester, Bristol and Leeds posted more roles in the IT sector during this time.

However, Glasgow really stood out in this report after advertising almost twice as many permanent IT roles in the last quarter. This increase is thought to have been largely driven by the Financial Services sector continuing to invest in the digital transformation of their projects.

Geoff Smith, Managing Director at Experis Europe, said that since the beginning of 2015 the number of IT roles advertised in Tech Cities outside of London have continued to increase.

Salaries on the rise

In Q3 alone, every 1 in 3 jobs analyzed are now outside of the UK’s tech capital and with the Government making a number of concerted efforts to boost the northern powerhouse, this trend is set to continue, he added.

Interestingly, salaries have also begun to rise outside of the capital city; while London jobs still offer the highest average salary (£52,649), the average wages outside of London have increased.

Cambridge alone saw a 7% rise (£44,821), Manchester witnessed a 5% increase (£38,474) and Leeds enjoyed an additional 2% (£38,900).

Mr Smith concluded that in the past few years the cities outside of London have slowly been introduced into the spotlight, and with new technology hubs springing up across the country, this is most definitely set to continue.

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SOURCE: http://www.onrec.com/news/statistics-and-trends/tech-cities-gain-ground-in-battle-with-london-for-it-talent