As uncertainty looms over the UK economy, retail businesses took action to hike up their pay in August, in a bid to combat a typically tricky period for hiring.

In fact, the latest job market data from independent job board, CV-Library, reveals that salaries for new roles have risen by a comfortable 1.4% year-on-year.

Despite this positive trend, the findings, which compared job market data from August 2019 with the same period in 2018, reveal that the number of retail jobs on offer dropped by a staggering 26.8% year on year and a further 23.3% month on month.

CV-Library founder Lee Biggins commented on the figures: “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 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.”