WAGES in Swindon are among the lowest in the country on average, according to a national survey.

Pay scales for new jobs averaged £26,000 – on a par with Bradford, Stoke and Maidstone.

Only Preston was lower at £25,718, while London was the highest at £41,000.

The report by Adzuna, a search engine for job adverts, found that pay for secretaries, chauffeurs, gardeners and waitresses fell this year. The top employer in 2012 was the London 2012 Olympic Games, which generated around 100,000 jobs.

South Swindon MP Robert Buckland said: “Swindon’s employment profile is much more varied than some of the places with the highest wages. The town has top-end jobs such as quality financial services, IT, sciences and high-end manufacturing jobs but the lower end of the scale is pulling the average down.

“This is possibly why Maidstone in Kent also has lower average wages when you wouldn’t normally associate it with some of the places in the north. Swindon is not exclusively a high-tech town and our strength is great variety.”

Mr Buckland welcomed findings in the survey pointing to a rise in employment. “The forecast that employment will continue to rise in 2013 is interesting and encouraging. I hope that will be the case in Swindon in the months to come,” he said.

However Chris Watts, of the GMB Wiltshire and Swindon branch, called on Swindon Council to create a more attractive jobs market in the town.

He said: “This highlights the decline in external investment and growth that Swindon has suffered over the last decade. The council did not make hay while the sun shone and are therefore less prepared to resist the ravages of a global recession in comparison to neighbouring towns. “This has resulted in higher unemployment driving local wages down, causing a significant impact on recruitment and retention within the local economy. We are in a downward spiral with a council administration speculatively investing in the wrong areas, dragging the borough further into debt.

“In the short term we need to invest in people, embrace the benefits of a living wage over minimum wage and tackle youth unemployment as a matter of priority whilst working to recreate the conditions that made Swindon such an attractive proposition in the 80s and 90s.”

Adzuna, which searched half a million vacancies, predicted the number of part-time jobs will increase by four per cent in early 2013.

The most lucrative lines of work last year were computing, engineering and finance, with average salary rises of six per cent over the last six months.

Supermarkets created more than 30,000 jobs while other top employers were the Royal Mail, which opened a dedicated parcel sorting depot in Swindon over Christmas, the NHS, Deloitte and Ryanair.

For more information log on to www.adzuna.co.uk/jobs