News in Brief

Latest e-skills Bulletin shows green shoots appearing towards the end of 2009

The latest e-skills Bulletin shows that while the UK remained in recession during the third quarter of 2009, green shoots were starting to appear within the ICT sector. Employment levels were high and unemployment rates among ICT professionals remained well below the UK average.

Key findings for Q3.09 include:

• The number of ICT professionals working in the UK increased by 10,000 during the third quarter of 2009 to 1,061,000 people.
• The unemployment rate for ICT professionals rose slightly to 5.2% though the rate remained well below that for the wider UK workforce (i.e. 8.3%).
• Following six consecutive quarterly falls, the number of advertised vacancies for ICT staff rose by 5% during the third quarter of 2009. Increased demand was recorded in both the permanent and contract markets, with demand for contractors particularly strong, up 26% from the previous quarter.
• Only 12% of ICT staff were thought to have gained work by applying directly to an employer compared with around 20% of workers more generally.
• Of the specific skills in demand for permanent staff, six areas had seen increased demand over two or more successive quarters – Fireworks, PHP, CTI, Foxpro, JDBC and RAD.
• For contractors, Bluetooth, Tibco and RDBMS have been in demand for two or more consecutive quarters. Exchange, Prince, Windows 2000, Coldfusion and VPN all declined for the seventh quarter in a row.
• There was a slight decrease in the incidence of job-related education/training during Q3.09. ICT professionals working outside the ICT industry were more likely to have received education/training.

To download the Bulletin and subscribe to future issues go to www.e-skills.com/bulletin.

The e-skills Bulletin is a research publication from e-skills UK. The quarterly report includes information about changes in the demand/supply of ICT labour and skills in the UK.

Posted on 09 Mar 2010