More people than ever before are now employed in ICT, unless they work in the public sector, which is seeing an overall relative decline, reports our sister site, www.publictechnology.net.
According to just-released data from ICT sector skills body e-skills UK, www.e-skills.com/bulletin, on the state of demand and supply of ICT labour and skills in the UK for the period October to December last year, the number of UK based IT professionals rose for the third consecutive quarter to an estimated 1,093,000 people – the highest ever recorded.
This means ICT professionals now account for 4% of the total UK workforce.
But while quarterly demand growth was reported in the public sector (+ 6%) and was geographically most pronounced in London (+ 9%), Southern England (+5%) and the Midlands (+5%), a quarterly fall of 12% was reported amongst employers in the public sector.
Karen Price, chief executive of e-skills UK, said: “We welcome the news that, despite difficult economic conditions, the IT sector continues to make a major contribution to employment growth in the UK. Employment has reached record levels and demand for employees is outstripping supply.”
But the group also noted a clampdown on training spend it feels could be damaging into the long-term. Just 23% of technology staff report that they received education or training in the last 13 weeks, compared with 27% of staff across all sectors.
The picture is even worse in small companies, with just 15% of employees in small businesses reporting having received training in the last 13 weeks.
“Access to skilled individuals is critical if we are to achieve the economic potential for the UK, and it is concerning that investment in training is declining,” noted Price. “More needs to be done to make fit for purpose and affordable training available to employers, and particularly to small businesses.”
Other key findings:
- The number of advertised vacancies for ICT staff rose for the sixth consecutive quarter to 105,000 positions while the count of “ready candidates” (in/out of work ICT staff that were seeking new/additional jobs) declined to 95,000.
- There were approximately 37,000 ICT unemployed professionals and the corresponding unemployment rate for tech professionals now stands at 3.3%
- Actual earnings for IT&T staff increased slightly during the final quarter and at £38,500 pa the average salary of full-time ICT staff was well above the UK average of £28,000 per year.
- The top ten skills demanded fromIT&T professionals remained “unchanged” – i.e. SQL, C, C#, .NET, SQL SVR, ASP, Java, Java Script, HTML and Linux for permanent positions andSQL, C, C#, Java, Oracle, .NET, SQL SVR, SAP, Unix and ASP for contract posts.
