East Midlands Newly Qualified Series

As discussed in the last article; Newly Qualified Accountants’ salaries have moved during the last few years.  There is little debate when speaking to CFOs and FDs across the East Midlands that this is the case.  However, the current salary for a Newly Qualified Accountant has been a matter of opinion.

In this article I’m going to be using the highest quality, real, live data from one of the industry-leading salary benchmarking tools (we offer a benchmarking service to all our clients and not just an opinion) to analyse the salaries of Newly Qualified Accountants in the East Midlands.  I’m going to look at the region as a whole and how each county compares, the impact of organisation size on salary and a look at different industries to see how they compare.  

So firstly; looking across the whole of the East Midlands and analysing 179 individuals, the median salary for a Newly Qualified Accountant is £38,000 with an Upper Quartile of £42,007 and a Lower Quartile of £32,562.  This is interesting because it shows that if the median salary for a Newly Qualified Accountant is £38,000 you need to be at least at this level when recruiting a new member of staff.  Furthermore, the lower quartile of £32,562 in my experience, is made up of Newly Qualified Accountants who have remained in their current role and organisation and have yet to move or receive a pay rise for their new qualification.  

Across the region, Nottingham has a median salary of £38,336, Derbyshire £38,000, Leicestershire £40,927, Lincolnshire £33,737, Rutland £34,575, and Northamptonshire £35,000.  Seemingly the counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, and Leicestershire are paying higher wages.  This could be down to them each having a city with a larger population and higher number of employers, which drives up competition for the salaries for Newly Qualified Accountants.

Across the East Midlands, when looking at the turnover of the business the median salary for Newly Qualified Accountants in businesses with a turnover less than £25m is £33,000.  In businesses with a turnover of £25m - £99m the median salary is £37,920, £100m - £999m the median salary is £38,587 and for businesses, with a turnover above £1billian it is £35,000.  This correlates with my experience in the market.  The misconception is that the largest organisations pay the highest salaries. However, we often see that it is those businesses in the turnover range just below the largest companies that offer the best remuneration.  This can be down to several factors. Such as larger companies relying on brand recognition and benefits packages to attract candidates. Larger organisations can be less nimble in reacting to salary changes in the market, in these organisations getting higher salaries signed off can be trickier and if you’re increasing the existing members of staff pay, a large amount of change is required.

Finally, when looking at different sectors; IT and Tech had the highest median salary of £43,502, retail came in at £36,731 and manufacturing £35,124.  Again, some interesting findings. My thoughts on IT being the highest could be due to the impact of the skills shortage across the organisations in this sector (software developers in particular). This may have increased salaries for all employees within organisations in this sector; therefore, increasing Newly Qualified Accountants’ salaries as well.

We can provide salary benchmarking for all our clients when working with us.  So, if you are interested in benchmarking a role you are recruiting or wish to benchmark existing roles within your team, please get in touch with me at henry@pratappartnership.com

Likewise, if you’re a Newly Qualified Accountant and your remuneration doesn’t quite stack up, please get in touch for a confidential conversation with me.

If anyone would like to see the reports behind this article, please also reach out.

In the next article in this series, I will be looking at the vacancy numbers across The East Midlands vs the number of newly qualified accountants in the region.  

All the best,

Henry