According to my friends over at recruitment website Allthetopbananas.com, the average advertised salary in the UK has dropped by £9,500 since October. Gulp!  The area with the highest average advertised salary is, unsurprisingly, London at £38,504 and the lowest is East Midland at £25,954. The drop does come after 12 months of solid growth, so people did expect to see things leveling off, but a drop like that means I’ll be forced to put the lock back on the drinks cabinet. After all, with more people competing for jobs, would you argue over a petty £10k?!

Tags: graduate joining salary, London salaries; salary index, salary, student grant

Companies like John Lewis and the Co-operative Group are owned by their staff, so everyone gets a cheque when the profits are calculated. Given the falling sales at John Lewis that looks unlikely to be much of a handout right now, but over at Co-op staff and customers have close to £9m to divvy up between them – though half of those due to receive payment have elected to donate a proportion of their dividends to charity, meaning about £500,000 will be distributed to community groups. Customers or Members earn points when they trade with the group and these are then converted into a share of the profits. The group’s businesses include banking, food retailing, pharmacy, travel, property, farming, and legal services. The 2008 interim dividend is more than £2 million higher than last year, as the group works to deliver a strategy to double profits. Seems like a safe bet.

Tags: Banking and Finance, financial incentives for graduates, financial rewards, Food and Drink, Retail

Bowing to public and political pressure, banks UBS and Goldman Sachs will not pay bonuses to their top executives for 2008, though other employees could still be in line to receive a bonus. At UBS their entire bonus structure has been reviewed so it is now only linked to the firm’s profitability. Other banks are expected to follow suit. A tricky one this: companies like Goldman are renowned for taking over every waking hour of their staff (and some of the sleeping ones too). That hard work seemed justified if it meant you got a bonus so big it meant you could eat swan for breakfast. Who’s going to want to sell their sole now..? Surely some will just be grateful to have a job. US bank Citigroup will have made 75,000 redundant by the time the current job cull is over. Can the last one out turn off the light. Er…and pay the electricity bill.

Tags: Banking and Finance, Graduaet careers at Goldman Sachs, UBS job opportunities

One for The Daily Mail readers: According to new government statistics, on average black women earn more than white women – 6% more to be precise. This is a complete reversal on the survey from the same time last year.  The Equality and Human Rights Commission said the figures may be explained by the fact that half of all black women live in London, where average pay is higher than elsewhere in the country.  It also said black women tended to take less time off work when having children, meaning they suffered less of a pay penalty when returning to work. Plus many work in health or social services where pay has been rising. Hear our friend Sonia from Imperial talk about being a black woman and finding the right job.

Tags: gender difference in salary, Pay, salary

The glass ceiling debate has garnered an extraordinary new piece of evidence. Research in the Journal of Economic Analysis and Policy has dug deep to find why women continue to earn less money than men, even in similar jobs. The see-saw debate: It’s either gender discrimination or simply that women slow down their career in favour of a family. The recent research suggests discrimination. Researchers found that women who were established in jobs and who then underwent sex changes to become men actually increased their earnings slightly, but that men who had the snip to become women lost about one-third of their earning power. Ouch (in every sense!)

Tags: Careers for women, graduate job interview talking piont, women earn less than men