![\"London](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/2.75607087.jpg\")
Workers in London earn almost double those in parts of Cornwall, figures suggest (Jordan Pettit\/PA)<\/p>\nWorkers in the early stages of their career face a pay penalty for doing the same job in a different part of England, according to new analysis which unveils \u201cstark and persistent\u201d regional wage inequalities.<\/p>\n
An average employee in London earns nearly twice as much as the equivalent in Liskeard, in Cornwall, research by the Resolution Foundation showed.<\/p>\n
The analysis suggests that higher wages are not driven by the people that work there, but by the place in which they work.<\/p>\n
This leads to a full-time worker early on in their career suffering a 5% \u201cplace-based pay penalty\u201d, according to the think tank. This could be worth about \u00a31,300 year if they move from a typical high-paying jobs market, such as Harrogate, to a low-paying one, such as Dudley.<\/p>\n
The study analysed earnings data spanning all early-career workers in England, covering more than 11 million individuals.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Resolution Foundation said its findings mark a significant shift from previous studies which have indicated that wage inequality between UK regions is driven by differences in the type of people who live there.<\/p>\n
Pay divides have also commonly been attributed to the size of the local jobs market.<\/p>\n
But the study suggests that a bigger jobs market does not necessarily equal higher wages \u2013 with, for example, average workers in Cambridge earning 23% more than in the similarly-sized Leicester.<\/p>\n
Instead, a major driver of place-based penalties come from where individual firms choose to locate, meaning that if higher-paying firms relocated to a new area then it could boost pay for the local population, it found.<\/p>\n
London continues to pay higher rates irrespective of what sector they work in, according to the analysis.<\/p>\n
The average yearly wage for a full-time worker in the capital is \u00a359,120 a year \u2013 nearly double the \u00a331,692 earned in Liskeard, official data shows.<\/p>\n
Workers in London earn almost double those in parts of Cornwall, figures suggest (Jordan Pettit\/PA)<\/p>\n
The Resolution Foundation said policymakers can address the issues by encouraging housebuilding, including affordable homes, in better-paying areas, and supporting higher-paying firms to expand to regions across England.<\/p>\n
Greg Thwaite, research director at the Resolution Foundation, said: \u201cEngland is beset by stark and persistent geographic wage inequalities, with Londoners\u2019 typical earnings twice as much as those living in places like Liskeard or Cromer.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s often assumed that people are driving these divides but, in fact, place-based pay penalties are rife across England.<\/p>\n
\u201cA typical early career worker could lose out on \u00a31,300 a year just because of where their job is located.<\/p>\n
\u201cPolicymakers at local, regional and national levels can address these divides by creating the conditions for high-paying firms to locate to their areas, while avoiding an arms race between regions in subsidies for firms.<\/p>\n
\u201cMoving to higher-paying areas can hugely boost young people\u2019s career earnings, but housing is a major barrier to making these moves. Policymakers should do more to bring these housing barriers down.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Workers in the early stages of their career face a pay penalty for doing the same job in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":206266,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5008],"tags":[748,393,4884,16,1259,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-206265","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-england","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-england","10":"tag-great-britain","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-uk-news","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=206265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/206266"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=206265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=206265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=206265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}