BELFAST is one of the worst cities in the UK to find a job with well over twice the number of people looking for work than vacancies.
The city came out towards the bottom end of a league table produced by online jobs search engine Adzuna.
It found there were 2.58 job seekers for each vacant position in Belfast.
The figures come as Adzuna revealed the majority of the UK is suffering a skills shortage with vacancies vastly outnumbering those seeking employment in 32 of the top 50 cities.
Adzuna said the statistics suggested large numbers of UK workers did not have the skills to fill the positions required in the modern workforce.
Belfast was very much on the wrong side of a north-south divide as the eighth worst place to find a job in the UK.
Sunderland came out bottom of the league with jobseekers outnumbering vacancies by more than five to one.
Other cities even worse off than Belfast included Hull, Bradford, Rochdale, the Wirral, Wolverhampton and Middlesborough.
At the other end of the scale, there were 10 jobs in Cambridge for every one person looking for work.
Adzuna co-founder Andrew Hunter said the issue was holding back economic recovery.
The number of jobseekers is falling while advertised vacancies are ballooning. This could be a warning sign that our workforce lacks the skills necessary to fill up many of the new jobs appearing," he said.
"The recovery certainly has the capacity to progress further and faster but at the moment theres a disconnect between our abilities and our economic climate. Its like standing outside your recently fixed up car, tuned up and ready to go, only to realise youve lost the keys.
If were going to get behind the wheel of this recovery, we need to unlock the potential of our workforce, with more emphasis on the diversity of available jobs if only people are aware of them and willing to train themselves. This change could be led by the government, but part of it is a culture-shift. We have the recovery we deserve now we need to build a workforce capable of taking advantage of it.
The sectors which experienced the greatest increase in vacancies were maintenance ( up 38 per cent) and trade and construction (up 28 per cent).
The report also looked at advertised salaries and said growth was "lacklustre" amid falling consumer prices.
The average UK salary was 34,274 in April, it found which was 6.5 per cent the average recorded on the same month in 2014 but 0.7 per cent than March.
Growth in advertised salaries in Northern Ireland meanwhile "lies well behind the pack" Adzuna found rising just 2 per cent over the year to 29,924.
Across the UK, average salaries rose 6.5 per cent to 34,274 helped by the likes of Yorkshire and The Humber which led the way with a 12.2 per cent annual change to 30,753.
Looking at salary growth by sector, average advertised pay for customer services improved 19.7 per cent over the year, while salaries in the administration sector rose 18.5 per cent.
At the other end of the scale, creative and design jobs have seen salaries slip 1.1 per cent compared to last year.
