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The silicon.com Skills Survey 2003: The headline figures
Is the 'skills gap' closing?

By Tony Hallett

Published: Monday 24 March 2003

The results of silicon.com's fifth annual skills survey are in and a first look at the headline figures shows both good and bad news for the UK's IT workforce.

Every year the headline figure is the proportion of respondents who say their organisation has vacancies in its IT department that it can't fill. Over the past 12 months the percentage has declined, for a fourth straight year. Now 12.4 per cent of you say there are unfilled positions, down from 17.5 per cent last year and 39 per cent the year before that - a sign perhaps that the skills gap is shrinking or that companies simply have fewer positions available as recruitment freezes take effect.

Indeed, it's clear that the boom years for IT are in the past - but the slowing growth rates aren't as precipitous as they were a year or two ago. We may be reaching the bottom of the hockey stick shaped graph, as they'd probably say in Silicon Valley.

But there are at least two headline pieces of good news, if you're an IT professional of almost any level working in the UK. First, salaries have increased - not by much, admittedly, but they have at least kept up with inflation, when averaged out.

Second, the UK remains a better place to ply your trade - in pure monetary terms - than Germany or France. Last year we found UK salaries markedly higher but we also found German pros, in particular, putting in fewer hours each week. This year the Germans and French are working longer. The downturn has been biting everywhere but harder working hasn't meant more money on the continent.

There are other broad changes we'll be analysing more closely over the coming days. Compared to last year, the number of you who consider yourselves 'happy permies' (you have a permanent job and want to stay permanent) has gone up 10 per cent. Meanwhile, the 'happy contractor' category (contracting and wanting to stay that way) has fallen a whopping 36 per cent.

Based on the survey, 75.3 per cent of our UK readers are permies, 9.6 per cent contractors, and 15.1 either 'unemployed' or 'other'.

In terms of specific skills, there is less demand across the board - another sign of that shrinking skills gap/recession-struck industry phenomenon - with one exception: Linux.

And where do you work? Well, increasingly outside London and the South-East. Our results show every other region on the up, apart from Northern Ireland and 'non-UK', where 9.2 per cent of this survey's respondents place themselves.

This may be related to wider economic factors, including house prices. Companies may also be moving out of London to avoid high office space costs.

And finally, we also found - perhaps unsurprisingly - that public sector areas such as government, healthcare and education have seen an influx of IT workers, whereas finance/banking and media/publishing, for example, have seen big declines. That too is a good indicator of the state of the market: private companies are feeling the pinch, but relatively recession-proof areas such as central and local government are enjoying a rise in IT budgets.

We will be bringing you the full list of results and detailed analysis on most of these areas over coming days, as well as announcing the winners of our champagne. Once again, we want to thank all of you - and there were almost 4,000 of you again in the UK alone this year - who took part in this poll, one of the biggest of its kind in Europe. Please send any feedback to our findings to editorial@silicon.com.