Oil & Gas sector offers highest salaries in Scotland

A report by a Scottish recruitment company has placed the oil & gas industry to the summit of the list of the top five Scottish industries paying the highest wages in 2014.

s1jobs assessed the average salaries for non-management roles within the top five highest earning sectors between 2012 and 2014, which revealed a mixture of increases and decreases amongst Scotland’s key industries.

The report shows Oil & Gas as the top earning sector followed by IT & Telecommunications, Financial Services/Investments, Engineering/Technical with Procurement coming in at number five.

Oil & Gas and IT & Telecommunications have shown substantial growth year upon year.

The average salary for Oil & Gas roles advertised on s1jobs website in 2014 was £47,168, while in IT & Telecommunications it was £43,930. The figures represent a £5,000 and £4,000 increase respectively for the sectors over the two year period.

The Engineering/Technical industry also received a welcome salary boost as workers are receiving £800 more on average than 2012 with an average salary of £35,050 this year.

Due to the amount of turmoil and upheaval in the Financial Services industry in recent years, salaries were expected to suffer, but the research shows the average has remained almost exactly the same and is £36,103 for 2014.

Procurement was perhaps the surprise package in the top five with an average salary of £34,879 for jobs advertised this year.

Gavin Mochan, Head of Sales with S1 jobs, said: “The high salaries in the Oil & Gas Sector will not be a surprise to many and our findings do reinforce that the industry is growing faster than others in Scotland.

“However, it’s fantastic to see specialist skills such as IT/Telecommunications also enjoying similar growth and not trailing very far behind.

“In general these findings illustrate a very healthy picture of the job market in Scotland, following such a tough economic period and we are definitely seeing very positive signs from a recruitment perspective.

“The number of jobs advertised on the s1jobs site in May was at its highest levels since February 2009. There are literally new jobs flooding the market as companies prepare to sprint out of recession.”

s1jobs separated Managerial and Executive roles from their research in order to give a truer picture in the sectors.

High-flyers in these senior management positions across all industries have seen a substantial salary increase of approximately £5,000 with an average salary of £48,864 in jobs advertised this year.

s1jobs is Scotland’s No 1 recruitment platform, attracting more than 600,000 users every month and is used by more than 2,000 companies, including Scotland’s top five Plcs.