The IT industry employs nearly 5% of the 29 million UK workers. The annual gross value added (GVA) contribution which the UK’s IT & telecoms industry delivers is worth £81 billion, 9% of the total UK economy and is at the forefront of every UK sector, with one in every 20 people (1.5 million) working in the UK being employed in the industry (Source: Technology Insights 2011).
The latest unemployment figures from the Office for National Statistics have shown that the number of jobless has risen by 129,000, to 2.62 million in the three month period of July to September this year – a 17 year high. However, The Recruitment & Employment Federation (REC) Technology’s monthly report on jobs has revealed that the demand for permanent IT staff has continued to grow steadily. On an index where a score above 50 denotes growth, demand for permanent IT staff was measured at 57.2 in October, the highest of any sector. Demand for IT contractors also saw growth, measuring 52.1.
IT Jobs Watch highlighted that Developers are the most sought after skill set for both permanent and contract roles, accounting for over 30% (permanent) and 22% (contract) of the IT Job adverts sampled within the last 3 months across the UK, with 90% of the roles offering a salary of more than £27,000 and 10% offering a salary of more than £65,000.
The chart below demonstrates the increasing desire for Developers, providing the 3-month moving total beginning in 2004 of permanent IT jobs citing Developer within the UK as a proportion of the total demand within the Job titles category.
What does the future hold?
Good news for the IT sector, E-skills UK’s technology Insights 2011 report suggests that exploiting the full potential of technology could boost the UK economy by an additional £50 billion over the next 5 to 7 years with employment in the IT industry over the next decade set to grow nearly five times faster than the UK average.
More promising news as reports show that the up-coming London 2012 Olympics is going to create more than 5,000 jobs, generating over £250M for the IT and telecoms job sector. The jobs will be created to deal with the level of technology services such as high-tech infrastructure and cyber security needed to support the Games. The government has also promised to publish the first ever forward-looking pipeline of contracts that will be on offer, which will be updated every six months. With the deputy government CIO Bill McCluggage tweeting that there are £25.9bn worth of government IT contracts in the pipeline up to 2017 (Computer Weekly).
