SWINDON has been named one of the best places in the country to look for jobs.

There are around 17 vacancies for every jobseeker in the town, which puts us joint-first at the top of the table with Oxford and Cambridge.

Julie Marshall, Team Leader for the Department of Work and Pensions at Swindon Jobcentre, was delighted with the news.

She said: "This is very good news, it's very impressive, though I'm not at all surprised.

"Swindon has always had a farily buoyant labour market.

"We have a great deal of vacancies open at the moment, there's so much work out there, including permanent work.

"We have a variety of jobs coming into the area, with a lot of new employers and businesses moving into Swindon.

"Companies know the workforce is available and know they will get a good calibre of employees.

"Hopefully this will continue and, with Christmas around the corner, there will be more work coming in.

"Companies want temporary staff to tide them over during the holiday season, then many of these staff get taken on permanently."

The data for these rankings comes from job website Adzuna.

Andrew Hunter, co-founder of Adzuna, said: “Yet another low in competition for available roles means that this market is definitely a candidates’ market.

“However, it’s concerning to see salaries on a downward slide, and we can only hope this is a temporary blip as part of a positive long-term trend.

“The Adzuna data is clear - employers from SME’s all the way up to large corporates are uneasy, anxious, hesitant to invest.

“Brexit uncertainty is hitting business confidence and this can clearly be seen in hiring patterns and advertised salaries across the country.”

The top five cities in the table remain unchanged from August, though Reading and Warrington have dropped off the pack.

Conversely, Sunderland is still the hardest place to look for a job, with Hull and Salford still rounding out the bottom three.

Hopeful signs exist however, as the number of jobseekers to vacancies is declining across these cities, in line with the overall national trend.

The number of advertised vacancies across the UK has still not fully recovered from its slump in December 2017, according to the Adzuna Job Vacancy Index.

The sluggish growth since the start of the year has stalled, with a monthly decline of 0.5 per cent contributing to an average of 1,137,904, a five-point-five per cent year-on-year decline.