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Retail businesses increased pay for staff by 1.4% in August, according to new data from independent job board CV-Library.
Despite this positive trend, CV-Library said the findings, which analyse job market data from August 2019 with the same period in 2018, revealed that the amount of retail jobs on offer dropped by 26.8% year-on-year and a further 23.3% month-on-month.
Lee Biggins, founder and CEO of CV-Library, said: “Given the busy holiday season, August is a notoriously tricky time to hire. While the hike in pay is promising, in reality, times are tough for retailers right now.
“August retail sales flatlined and we know that there is a the storm on the horizon in the form of Brexit, which is leaving organisations facing a huge sense of economic uncertainty.”
The data also shows that applications for new retail jobs fell by 25.3% last month when looking at year-on-year data.
He added: “Alongside our findings, we know that the national employment rate is at any all-time high and many employers across the retail industry are struggling to fill their roles.
“There is still an evident skills shortage in the UK, which has clearly resulted in a jump in pay. For now, we’ll need to sit patiently and wait to see what happens with parliament in the coming weeks.”
