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IT sector created more than 1 million jobs in 2012, says Adzuna

The growth in smartphone apps, tablets and online shopping has led to a 'boom year' for IT jobs, with more than one million specialist roles advertised in the sector, according to a report published by job search website Adzuna.

The report, which analysed a search index of over 500,000 job vacancies, revealed  engineering and finance job sectors have also been buoyant with average salaries increasing by 6% over the past six months.

The report showed that average pay for employees working for iPhone developers increased by 25% to £43,410 in 2012. It claims this reflects demand levels for specific skills sets in the UK job market. Financial advisors (+22%) and translators (+17%) also saw pay increases.

The report showed that the biggest recruiter in the UK this year was the London 2012 Olympic games, which created approximately 100,000 jobs. It also found that UK supermarkets topped the job creation charts with Tesco, Morrisons and Asda creating around 31,000 jobs between them.

Other sizeable recruiters included The Royal Mail, NHS, Deloitte and Ryan Air.

The report found that despite the economic downturn, the UK employment market has been resilient. London is the city with the highest job creation rate and also remains the best paying city with an average salary of around £41,369 - Preston is the lowest paying city with an average of £25,718.

Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said: "Because we list nearly every UK job ad in our search engine, we're able to see how the employment market is performing right across the country.

"Based on the 2012 data, we expect unemployment to continue to fall in 2013 with technology & engineering sectors performing the strongest in the first half of the year."