Social Skills Job Trends in the North West

Social Skills (Interpersonal, Communication)
England > North West

The table below looks at the prevalence of the term Social Skills in permanent job vacancies in the North West. Included is a benchmarking guide to the salaries offered in vacancies that cited Social Skills over the 6 months leading up to 31 December 2025, comparing them to the same period in the previous two years.

6 months to
31 Dec 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 1 1 1
Rank change year-on-year 0 0 +3
Permanent jobs citing Social Skills 2,403 1,487 920
As % of all permanent jobs in the North West 39.07% 28.48% 23.84%
As % of the General category 60.36% 43.42% 41.14%
Number of salaries quoted 596 630 676
10th Percentile £26,250 £30,000 £25,000
25th Percentile £31,188 £37,500 £30,000
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £42,500 £50,000 £47,500
Median % change year-on-year -15.00% +5.26% -
75th Percentile £61,250 £61,215 £66,778
90th Percentile £77,500 £77,500 £76,875
England median annual salary £50,000 £55,320 £55,000
% change year-on-year -9.62% +0.58% -4.35%

All General Skills
North West

Social Skills falls under the General Skills category. For comparison with the information above, the following table provides summary statistics for all permanent job vacancies requiring general skills in the North West.

Permanent vacancies with a requirement for general skills 3,981 3,425 2,236
As % of all permanent jobs advertised in the North West 64.72% 65.59% 57.94%
Number of salaries quoted 1,628 1,538 1,668
10th Percentile £27,000 £31,250 £27,000
25th Percentile £32,000 £40,000 £37,270
Median annual salary (50th Percentile) £47,500 £51,000 £51,500
Median % change year-on-year -6.86% -0.97% -1.90%
75th Percentile £65,000 £65,000 £68,750
90th Percentile £81,250 £80,000 £82,548
England median annual salary £52,500 £60,000 £60,000
% change year-on-year -12.50% - -4.00%

Social Skills
Job Vacancy Trend in the North West

Historical trend showing the proportion of permanent IT job postings citing Social Skills relative to all permanent IT jobs advertised in the North West.

Social Skills job vacancy trend in the North West

Social Skills
Salary Trend in the North West

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Social Skills.

Salary distribution trend for jobs in the North West citing Social Skills

Social Skills
Salary Histogram in the North West

Salary distribution for jobs citing Social Skills in the North West over the 6 months to 31 December 2025.

Salary histogram for Social Skills in the North West

Social Skills
Job Locations in the North West

The table below looks at the demand and provides a guide to the median salaries quoted in IT jobs citing Social Skills within the North West region over the 6 months to 31 December 2025. The 'Rank Change' column provides an indication of the change in demand within each location based on the same 6 month period last year.

Location Rank Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Matching
Permanent
IT Job Ads
Median Salary
Past 6 Months
Median Salary
% Change
on Same Period
Last Year
Live
Jobs
Manchester 0 890 £43,000 -14.00% 392
Lancashire +1 693 £40,000 -20.00% 148
Cheshire 0 662 £37,750 -11.18% 78
Merseyside -2 122 £47,500 +46.15% 43
Cumbria -5 43 £45,000 -25.00% 18
Social Skills
England

Social Skills
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North West by Category

The following tables expand on the one above by listing co-occurrences grouped by category. They cover the same employment type, locality and period, with up to 20 co-occurrences shown in each category:

Application Platforms
1 51 (2.12%) SharePoint
2 29 (1.21%) Microsoft Exchange
3 13 (0.54%) WordPress
4 9 (0.37%) CMS
5 4 (0.17%) Camunda
5 4 (0.17%) Confluence
6 3 (0.12%) Apache Airflow
6 3 (0.12%) Apache Spark
6 3 (0.12%) Headless CMS
6 3 (0.12%) Magnolia
6 3 (0.12%) Oracle Workflow
7 2 (0.083%) FactoryTalk
7 2 (0.083%) WinCC
8 1 (0.042%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 1 (0.042%) Anypoint
8 1 (0.042%) Apache Solr
8 1 (0.042%) IIS
8 1 (0.042%) Jupyter
8 1 (0.042%) SAS
8 1 (0.042%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 92 (3.83%) Microsoft Excel
2 73 (3.04%) Microsoft Office
3 30 (1.25%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 7 (0.29%) Adobe Creative Suite
5 5 (0.21%) Chatbot
5 5 (0.21%) Photoshop
6 4 (0.17%) Adobe Illustrator
7 3 (0.12%) AutoCAD
7 3 (0.12%) Elementor
7 3 (0.12%) Microsoft Project
8 2 (0.083%) Revit
8 2 (0.083%) Simulink
8 2 (0.083%) Trello
9 1 (0.042%) Adobe Premiere
9 1 (0.042%) MS Visio
Business Applications
1 9 (0.37%) SAP Business One
1 9 (0.37%) Unit4 Business World
2 7 (0.29%) SAP S/4HANA
3 3 (0.12%) Dynamics CRM
3 3 (0.12%) Shopify
4 2 (0.083%) Dynamics NAV
4 2 (0.083%) SAP WM
5 1 (0.042%) Advent Geneva
5 1 (0.042%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.042%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.042%) SAP EWM
5 1 (0.042%) SAP IBP
5 1 (0.042%) SAP MII
5 1 (0.042%) SAP Oil and Gas
5 1 (0.042%) Siebel CRM
Cloud Services
1 1,483 (61.71%) Cloud Computing
2 179 (7.45%) Azure
3 140 (5.83%) Microsoft 365
4 90 (3.75%) Power Platform
5 87 (3.62%) AWS
6 56 (2.33%) Entra ID
7 48 (2.00%) SaaS
8 22 (0.92%) Azure AI
9 20 (0.83%) GCP
10 19 (0.79%) Microsoft Purview
11 17 (0.71%) IaaS
11 17 (0.71%) OneDrive
12 15 (0.62%) Power Automate
13 13 (0.54%) Microsoft Copilot
14 12 (0.50%) Dynamics 365
15 8 (0.33%) Amazon S3
15 8 (0.33%) Azure Monitor
16 7 (0.29%) OCI
16 7 (0.29%) PowerApps
16 7 (0.29%) Serverless
Communications & Networking
1 1,485 (61.80%) Internet
2 43 (1.79%) Firewall
3 32 (1.33%) VPN
4 30 (1.25%) LAN
5 29 (1.21%) WAN
6 26 (1.08%) VLAN
7 15 (0.62%) DNS
8 14 (0.58%) DHCP
9 13 (0.54%) TCP/IP
10 12 (0.50%) Wireless
11 11 (0.46%) VoIP
12 9 (0.37%) DMZ
12 9 (0.37%) Network Security
12 9 (0.37%) SD-WAN
12 9 (0.37%) Wi-Fi
13 8 (0.33%) Ethernet
14 6 (0.25%) Broadband
15 5 (0.21%) SAN
15 5 (0.21%) SSL
15 5 (0.21%) STUN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 74 (3.08%) Power BI
2 38 (1.58%) Tableau
3 30 (1.25%) SQL Server
4 11 (0.46%) NoSQL
5 10 (0.42%) Data Warehouse
6 9 (0.37%) Crystal Reports
6 9 (0.37%) PostgreSQL
7 8 (0.33%) Data Lake
7 8 (0.33%) Relational Database
7 8 (0.33%) SQL Server Reporting Services
8 7 (0.29%) MySQL
9 6 (0.25%) DynamoDB
9 6 (0.25%) MongoDB
9 6 (0.25%) Oracle Reports
10 5 (0.21%) Amazon Redshift
10 5 (0.21%) Azure SQL Database
10 5 (0.21%) Elasticsearch
11 4 (0.17%) GIS
11 4 (0.17%) Hadoop
11 4 (0.17%) Metadata
Development Applications
1 17 (0.71%) Git
2 11 (0.46%) GitLab
3 8 (0.33%) JIRA
4 7 (0.29%) Bitbucket
5 6 (0.25%) Jenkins
6 5 (0.21%) SonarQube
6 5 (0.21%) Sonatype Nexus
7 2 (0.083%) Octopus Deploy
8 1 (0.042%) Atlassian Bamboo
8 1 (0.042%) Cypress.io
8 1 (0.042%) JUnit
8 1 (0.042%) Maven
8 1 (0.042%) Pivotal Tracker
8 1 (0.042%) Selenium
General
1 1,543 (64.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
2 1,496 (62.26%) Banking
3 230 (9.57%) Finance
4 181 (7.53%) Analytical Skills
5 79 (3.29%) Marketing
6 67 (2.79%) Legal
7 61 (2.54%) Organisational Skills
8 48 (2.00%) Law
9 44 (1.83%) Presentation Skills
10 43 (1.79%) Retail
11 38 (1.58%) Public Sector
12 30 (1.25%) Manufacturing
12 30 (1.25%) Telecoms
13 24 (1.00%) Influencing Skills
14 22 (0.92%) Electronics
15 20 (0.83%) Pharmaceutical
16 19 (0.79%) Military
17 15 (0.62%) Back Office
18 13 (0.54%) Advertising
19 12 (0.50%) Documentation Skills
Job Titles
1 1,127 (46.90%) Lecturer
2 143 (5.95%) Analyst
3 100 (4.16%) IT Support
4 71 (2.95%) Senior
5 58 (2.41%) Support Engineer
6 49 (2.04%) Lead
7 47 (1.96%) Junior
8 44 (1.83%) Developer
9 41 (1.71%) Project Manager
10 40 (1.66%) Junior Analyst
11 36 (1.50%) Data Analyst
12 31 (1.29%) Architect
13 29 (1.21%) Consultant
13 29 (1.21%) Technical Support
14 27 (1.12%) IT Manager
15 25 (1.04%) IT Engineer
15 25 (1.04%) Support Technician
16 22 (0.92%) 2nd Line Support
16 22 (0.92%) Cybersecurity Analyst
16 22 (0.92%) Security Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 27 (1.12%) HTML
2 24 (1.00%) CSS
2 24 (1.00%) React
3 23 (0.96%) .NET
4 15 (0.62%) RESTful
5 9 (0.37%) Node.js
5 9 (0.37%) REST
6 8 (0.33%) Vue
7 7 (0.29%) AngularJS
7 7 (0.29%) ASP.NET
8 6 (0.25%) Middleware
8 6 (0.25%) Oracle Fusion
9 5 (0.21%) Django
9 5 (0.21%) FreeSWITCH
9 5 (0.21%) JSON
10 4 (0.17%) CSS3
10 4 (0.17%) Flask
10 4 (0.17%) HTML5
10 4 (0.17%) Kafka
10 4 (0.17%) RabbitMQ
Miscellaneous
1 1,488 (61.92%) IoT
2 104 (4.33%) Driving Licence
3 75 (3.12%) Onboarding
4 49 (2.04%) Analytical Mindset
5 45 (1.87%) Self-Motivation
6 44 (1.83%) Management Information System
7 28 (1.17%) Social Media
8 19 (0.79%) Enterprise Software
9 16 (0.67%) Cloud Native
10 15 (0.62%) EPoS
11 13 (0.54%) Greenfield Project
12 12 (0.50%) Public Cloud
13 11 (0.46%) Operational Technology
14 10 (0.42%) Legacy Systems
14 10 (0.42%) Product Ownership
14 10 (0.42%) Virtual Team
15 8 (0.33%) Blog
15 8 (0.33%) Life Science
16 7 (0.29%) Data Protection Act
16 7 (0.29%) Taxonomies
Operating Systems
1 148 (6.16%) Windows
2 39 (1.62%) Windows Server
3 27 (1.12%) Windows 10
4 24 (1.00%) Linux
5 14 (0.58%) Apple iOS
6 12 (0.50%) Android
7 6 (0.25%) Mac OS
7 6 (0.25%) Mac OS X
8 5 (0.21%) Debian
9 2 (0.083%) Unix
10 1 (0.042%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 1 (0.042%) Windows 7
10 1 (0.042%) Windows 8
10 1 (0.042%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,593 (66.29%) AI
2 1,578 (65.67%) Cybersecurity
3 1,517 (63.13%) User Experience
4 1,493 (62.13%) Machine Learning
5 1,483 (61.71%) Web Development
6 312 (12.98%) Problem-Solving
7 167 (6.95%) Continuous Improvement
8 159 (6.62%) Customer Service
9 132 (5.49%) Agile
10 102 (4.24%) Mentoring
11 99 (4.12%) Decision-Making
12 85 (3.54%) Stakeholder Management
13 81 (3.37%) Business Intelligence
14 69 (2.87%) CRM
15 65 (2.70%) Coaching
15 65 (2.70%) Service Delivery
16 58 (2.41%) DevOps
17 57 (2.37%) ITIL
18 56 (2.33%) Project Management
19 51 (2.12%) CI/CD
Programming Languages
1 108 (4.49%) SQL
2 55 (2.29%) Python
3 30 (1.25%) JavaScript
4 23 (0.96%) PowerShell
5 21 (0.87%) Java
6 18 (0.75%) C#
7 13 (0.54%) TypeScript
8 7 (0.29%) Bash
9 5 (0.21%) R
10 4 (0.17%) Data Analysis Expressions
10 4 (0.17%) Go
10 4 (0.17%) PHP
11 3 (0.12%) Scala
11 3 (0.12%) Shell Script
12 2 (0.083%) Bicep
12 2 (0.083%) C++
12 2 (0.083%) MATLAB
13 1 (0.042%) ANSI SQL
13 1 (0.042%) VBA
Qualifications
1 1,644 (68.41%) Degree
2 1,481 (61.63%) Master's Degree
3 1,480 (61.59%) PhD
4 1,477 (61.46%) Postgraduate
5 52 (2.16%) DBS Check
6 47 (1.96%) Azure Certification
7 38 (1.58%) ACCA
7 38 (1.58%) CIMA
8 30 (1.25%) Security Cleared
9 26 (1.08%) Cisco Certification
10 23 (0.96%) CCNA
11 22 (0.92%) SC Cleared
12 21 (0.87%) BPSS Clearance
13 20 (0.83%) CompTIA CySA+
13 20 (0.83%) CompTIA Security+
14 18 (0.75%) Computer Science Degree
15 16 (0.67%) HND
16 14 (0.58%) HNC
17 13 (0.54%) JNCIA
18 11 (0.46%) A+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 35 (1.46%) Data Quality
2 33 (1.37%) GDPR
3 26 (1.08%) QA
4 20 (0.83%) Cyber Essentials
4 20 (0.83%) SLA
5 19 (0.79%) Accessibility
6 12 (0.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 9 (0.37%) PMO
8 6 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
8 6 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials PLUS
8 6 (0.25%) GLBA
8 6 (0.25%) ISO 9001
9 5 (0.21%) NIST
10 4 (0.17%) SEPA
10 4 (0.17%) TARGET2
11 3 (0.12%) Actionable Recommendations
12 2 (0.083%) Def Stans
12 2 (0.083%) FINRA
12 2 (0.083%) IEC 61508
12 2 (0.083%) P3O
System Software
1 77 (3.20%) Active Directory
2 15 (0.62%) Docker
3 10 (0.42%) Hyper-V
4 7 (0.29%) Firmware
5 5 (0.21%) Kamailio
5 5 (0.21%) Virtual Desktop
6 4 (0.17%) VMware Infrastructure
7 3 (0.12%) Virtual Machines
8 2 (0.083%) VMware ESXi
9 1 (0.042%) HDFS
Systems Management
1 44 (1.83%) Microsoft Intune
2 18 (0.75%) Terraform
3 17 (0.71%) Kubernetes
4 9 (0.37%) Single Sign-On
5 6 (0.25%) Autotask
6 5 (0.21%) Grafana
6 5 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
6 5 (0.21%) Prometheus
6 5 (0.21%) SCCM
7 3 (0.12%) Ansible
8 2 (0.083%) AssetCenter
8 2 (0.083%) BMC PATROL
8 2 (0.083%) FortiGate
8 2 (0.083%) Rancher
8 2 (0.083%) SmoothWall
9 1 (0.042%) Fluentd
9 1 (0.042%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 267 (11.11%) Microsoft
2 49 (2.04%) ServiceNow
3 33 (1.37%) SAP
4 32 (1.33%) Cisco
5 31 (1.29%) Workday
6 22 (0.92%) Oracle
7 21 (0.87%) Apple
7 21 (0.87%) Salesforce
8 20 (0.83%) Adobe
8 20 (0.83%) ForeScout
9 19 (0.79%) Fortinet
10 16 (0.67%) Aruba
10 16 (0.67%) Dell
11 14 (0.58%) Juniper
12 13 (0.54%) VMware
13 12 (0.50%) Google
14 11 (0.46%) Splunk
15 10 (0.42%) HubSpot
16 8 (0.33%) New Relic
17 7 (0.29%) Meraki