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Which Skills Are The Best For Increasing Your Salary? #Agile and #Ruby are top 5 skills for earning potential

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A study by Totally Money @TotallyMoneyhas looked into the best skills to learn in order to increase your salary and boost your career opportunities. Fancy a change of scenery? 

  • Research finds that the coding skill Ruby has the highest earning potential of £78,076
  • With an average cost of £460, Agile is the most expensive skill to learn and ranks 5th for highest salary earning potential
  • The skill that is most in-demand is ‘Data’ with more than 30,000 jobs available 

For those looking to increase their skill archive, it’s important to find out how much it could benefit your career. With the cost of learning the skill on top of your time, can you be confident you’re making the right investment? 

Totally Money has created a study which looks into a number of popular and in-demand skills to analyse which one increases your salary the most. The skills have been broken up into 5 categories – coding, language, creative, business and trade. 

Study Shows Ruby Is The Best Skill To Learn For Increasing Your Salary 

The table below shows the best skills earning potential.

Ranking

Skill

Job Industry

Lower bracket salary

Average salary

Higher bracket salary 

1

Ruby

Coding

£57,500

£72,500

£78,076

2

Java

Coding 

£50,000

£62,500

£77,500

3

Python

Coding

£50,000

£62,500

£77,000

4

Cloud Computing

Coding

£41,250

£57,500

£72,500

5

Agile

Business

£45,000

£57,500

£72,500

Ruby has been revealed as the best skill to increase your salary with an average salary of £72,500. On average a course costs £219.21, ranking as the 8th most expensive skill to learn! 

Whilst coding proves to be the best category to learn to increase your salary, it comes at a cost. From the top 10 most expensive skills to learn, coding appears 5 times with the average course costing £272.98. 

Spanish Is The Most Popular Skill To Learn – But Ranks In Bottom 20 For Employability

Within the research, Totally Money looked at the most in-demand skills through Google search terms.  

Ranking

Skill

Job Industry

Total Monthly Search Volume*

1

Spanish

Language

22,030

2

Python

Coding

13,800

3

French

Language

13,050

4

Japanese

Language

10,720

5

German

Language

7,810

*This relates to the following terms searched through Google:

“How to learn [skill]”, “Learn [skill]”, “How to [skill]”, “[skill] course”, “[skill] lessons”

Languages Dominate The Most Popular Skills To Learn But Are They Worth It?

Despite Spanish being the most popular skill to learn, German has a higher earning potential whilst also having nearly double the amount of jobs available. 

Spanish ranks as 2nd for the highest earning potential out of all languages studied. Although being the 4th most popular skill to learn, Japanese has the 4th lowest salary potential earnings from all skills, behind Russian, Hindi and Gardening. 

Agile Is The Most Expensive Skill To Learn – But Is It The Best Skill For Return Of Investment?

An important factor to take into consideration when looking to learn a skill is the cost of a course. For more complex skills, the costs can add up and it becomes a question of whether it is worth your time and money.

Ranking 1st for the most expensive skill to learn, Agile sits at the 5th highest for potential earnings. Lean is also a skill that shows little return of investment compared to others, ranking as the 14th best skill for salary earnings. With Ruby providing the highest salary potential earnings, it sits at the 8th most expensive skill to learn. Therefore becoming a better investment for your career when compared to Agile and Lean.  

The table below shows the skills with the highest costs to learn: 

Ranking

Job Industry

Skill

Cost to learn

1

Business

Agile 

£461.64

2

Business

Lean

£394.73

3

Coding

C++

£366.09

4

Business

C#

£366.09

5

Business

Project Management

£322.56

 Which skills would you be most interested in learning? Will it improve your career? Take a look at the study here to find out: https://www.totallymoney.com/skill-up/

Henry Keegan, Head of Search, from Totally Money said: “Finding the right skill to learn can be tricky, especially when there’s so many to choose from. It’s important to take in a number of factors such as the future potential earnings, the cost of learning the skill and whether there is actually a demand for it.”

 

 

 
 
 


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