Thousands of tech newbies needed to plug skills gap

The good news is the UK's IT & telecoms sector is thriving. The bad news is 140,000 newbies are likely to be needed annually to satisfy the industry's demand for increasingly skilled staff.

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That's according to research from industry skills body e-skills UK, which notes computing student numbers in the UK are falling - down 50 per cent in the last five years. Meanwhile, the number of women in the sector is falling - down to just one in five workers.

e-skills UK predicts just 19 per cent of the sector's new recruits will come direct from education. More than half will be experienced workers transferring in from other occupations - and this puts fresh focus on training, it said.

Karen Price, CEO of e-skills UK, said as some IT activities move out of the country to lower cost nations, the UK's IT & telecoms sector must look to other industries to plug its skills gap by reskilling and upskilling workers.

She said in a statement: "The forecasts for continued industry growth uncovered by our research are very encouraging. But beneath these forecasts lies a complex picture of restructuring and skills shift."

Paul Coby, CIO, British Airways and chair of the e-skills UK CIO Board, said business and technology skills training must improve "at all levels".

He said in a statement: "This means producing not just highly skilled IT professionals but business and public leaders who are IT savvy, and a workforce across all industries that is trained and able to use technology."

The research, entitled UK IT & Telecoms Insights 2008, predicts the majority of employment growth for jobs in the sector will be in IT management, IT strategy and software - especially project management, systems architecture, business process, change management, security and risk management.

More on the UK's IT & telecoms sector…

♦  Around one in 20 of the UK's workforce is employed in IT & telecoms
♦  40 per cent of the sector's staff have managerial/strategy roles
♦  Staff earn 61 per cent more than the UK average
♦  There are more than 109,000 businesses in the sector
♦  More than 98 per cent of the companies are service-based
♦  86 per cent of companies employ just four or fewer people
♦  42 per cent of companies are based in the South East of England

Customer and business-oriented skills will also be in increased demand, along with advanced technical capability.

Around a fifth (22 per cent) of companies in the sector looking to recruit staff said they are finding it difficult to attract applicants with the right skills, the research found.

e-skills UK's Price added: "The importance of IT & telecoms to the UK means that skills gaps and shortages have a huge knock-on effect for the rest of the economy."