The average IT professional in the UK now earns over £40,000 per year, a record in the industry

CV Screen - Britain's jobs market has continued to go from strength to strength this week as the IT sector hits a record high.

New figures from CV Screen show that the average permanent salary of an IT professional has crept up to over £40,000 per year, a two percent rise over the last three years and the highest average wage ever recorded for the industry.

The analysis looked at fifty different IT roles placed in the national press and on all of the UK's leading job boards in the first three months of 2016 and compared them to the same period three years earlier.

The survey also showed the regions where IT professionals earn the most.

Unsurprisingly, those working in London earn the most with the average salary in the capital fourteen percent above the national average.

In second and third place are the South East and Thames Valley where average earnings are at eight percent and five percent above the national average respectively.

Matthew Iveson, Managing Director at CV Screen said: "London and the South East are consistently ranked among the best places to work in Britain and Thames Valley has been described as the UK's Silicon Valley so it is no surprise that IT professionals earn more than the national average in these regions."

Completing the top five regions is East Anglia, one percent above the national average and the Midlands, two percent below the national average. East Anglia benefits from a number of world leading tech companies, as well as one of the top universities, while the Midlands is home to a number of large cities that play host to some of the world's biggest companies.

London, South East, Thames Valley and East Anglia are the only regions to see IT wages above the national average.

The lowest-paying region is Wales, where average IT salaries are thirteen percent below the national average. This ties in with data from numerous salary studies that show Welsh workers are the lowest paid in the UK.

Second from last is the South West, where average IT salaries were eleven percent below the national average, followed by the North West at ten percent below, the North East at eight percent below and Scotland at four percent below.