"In this year's survey," says Nick Jones, director at Blue Eskimo, "we saw a significant increase in those who said that they received a salary increase in the last twelve months - from around 49% to around 60%. That's the biggest shift upwards in the best part of a decade."

According to Blue Eskimo's annual survey, 2016 was the first year that the number of people who said they received a pay increase rose above 2008's figure - when it sat at 58% of respondents, before it dropped to around 35% in 2009. Since then, annual improvements on the 2009 figure have been modest.

"The survey also showed that more people - almost 60% - this year felt that their salary is about right when compared to the industry average," says Jones. "That's a really decent jump from last year's figure of 42%." There had previously been an uplift (to around 55%) in 2014, but, like salaries, the annual trend since 2008 has largely been one of decline.

In terms of trends, benefits have increased over the last nine years, but - in general - only slightly; almost all have fallen steadily for much of that time, to finally return to 2008 levels over the last couple of years. An exception is that, since 2008, the number of people with company pensions has steadily moved upwards, from around 49% to around 58% of those surveyed.

"This is excellent news," says Jones. "What's more, this year around 75% of people said that they were happy in work - either 'quite happy' or 'very happy'. This is a number of which to be proud - Deloitte's Shift Index survey showed around 80% of people are, overall, dissatisfied with their jobs. The learning sector's happiness is in inverse proportion to the general average."

The full survey contains detailed answers to many more questions and can be downloaded free from Blue Eskimo's website. The results will be presented in greater detail, along with an analysis of how skills are changing - not just within the learning sector, but also for many learning and development roles - at the 1 Feb 2017 lunchtime session at the Learning Technologies conference 2017.