The cities where you can earn the highest wages
Unsurprisingly, London comes top with average earnings at £41,000 in the capital, but Aberdeen comes a close secondAberdeen is the second highest-paid city in the UK, with average earnings at £38,086
11:44AM GMT 25 Dec 2014
Two Scottish cities have been ranked among the top three places for average earnings in the UK, as London comes out on top.
Average earnings in Aberdeen and Edinburgh are £38,036 and £35,784 respectively, as Scotland continues to benefit from a strong financial services sector.
The two cities are consistently raked among the best places to live in Britain, based on rental costs, salary levels, and its below-average number of people out of work – Aberdeen has an unemployment rate of just 2pc, compared to a national average of 5.9pc.
The average pay in London is £40,752, helped by strong finance and tourism industries.
The list was put together by jobs website Adzuna, which analysed more than 800,000 jobs advertised on the website this year.
Home to 8.3m people, London generates more than 22pc of the total UK economy, and salaries are consistently higher than the rest of the UK. Adzuna says average earnings for vacancies listed on its website were £40,752 this year, against an average across the UK of £30,466.
That ties in with data from the Office for National Statistics, which calculates that average annual earnings in the capital are £35,238, compared to a national average of £27,017.
Completing the top five is Reading and Cambridge. Reading benefits from being a 25-minute commute from central London, while Cambridge is home to some of the UK's leading tech companies, including ARM and Autonomy, as well as one of the world's top universities.
At number six, Luton benefits from the fact that is has one of the largest airports, which accounts for about 40pc of total jobs in the town. A new business park in the area is home to blue chip companies including Selex Galileo (BAE Systems), AstraZeneca, and Ernst & Young, boosting private sector employment in the region.
The lowest-paying city is Preston, where average salaries are £23,060. The Northern city suffered with high youth unemployment post-recession, but it's local economy has recently picked up. Last year, it was a UK hotspot for foreign investment, with five deals totalling £393m in the first nine months of 2013
Second from last is Sunderland, where average salaries are £24,072, followed by Chichester at £26,105
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