Londoners still earn more than workers in any other city in the UK, a new report has found.
People in the capital earn around £675 a week, according to the Cities Outlook 2016 report produced by the Centre for Cities.
The report found that the cities with the highest wages and lowest levels of welfare claims were preominantely in the south east, with workers in Crawley and Slough earning £641 and £636 per week respectively.
The fourth highest earning city was Reading, where the average weekly was £619, and Aberdeen residents were in fifth place, earning £617.
At the other end of the scale, worked in Huddersfield earned the least in the UK, with the average wage in the West Yorkshire town just £399.
However Southend, in Essex, was the second lowest-paid city, with an average wage of £404.
In third was Burnley in Lancashire, where wages averaged £416, only marginally less than Mansfied in Nottinghamshire, where workers bring home an average of £417 per week, and Wigan in Greater Manchester where the average wage was £418.
However, the results do not neccessarily mean that people living in the capital are better off, as in Burnley for example, the average rent on a one bedroom property is just £381, while Londoners can expect to pay closer to £2000.
The report said the job for the government will be to ensure that welfare claims do not increase in high-earning cities, as people flock to them to make a living.
"Those cities that have higher than average wages and lower than average welfare bills have seen the strongest growth in jobs, but also in welfare, in recent years," it read.
"And their stronger economies make them well placed to continue to grow in the coming years.
"The challenge for the government will be to limit further increases in welfare spending in these cities, which have in part been driven by a combination of high demand to live in them and an insufficient response in terms of the expansion of supply of housing."
