News in Brief

Latest e-skills Bulletin (a summary of ICT labour market trends) released

e-skills UK has published the latest e-skills Bulletin (Q1 2006), offering an independent summary of the latest ICT labour market data and trends collected from Government and private sources.

Need to build the business case for change in your organisation?  e-skills UK's Bulletins are the definitive guide to IT and Telecoms skills issues and trends providing you with the knowledge and justification to implement change in your organisation.  From stock market performance, spending patterns, company failures and redundancies, changes in employment and demand for skills to pay rates, education/training and future recruitment activity, e-skills UK is your essential research partner.

This quarter’s e-skills Bulletin (Q1 2006) revealed that:

• One in five ICT recruiters (20%) were having difficulty attracting applicants with the right skills qualifications/experience

• In particular, employers appear to have experienced difficulties recruiting quality staff in the areas of Systems Design, Systems Development and PC Support.

• 5% of establishments with ICT professionals said that their skills did not match those needed by the business.

• The actual gross earnings recorded by ICT staff also fell by 2% to £640 per week compared with £390 for all UK workers.

Focus section: ICT staff in the Public sector

• Just under one in six (14%) of ICT staff in the UK were employed in the public sector in Q4.05 compared with just over one in ten (11%) in Q4.01.

• Of the 140,000 people working in ICT positions in the public sector, 75% are employed as ICT Managers or Operations/User Support Technicians.

• Public sector ICT staff (full-time) earn around £570 per week - £90 per week (14%) less than those in the private sector.

To access the latest e-skills Bulletin visit www.e-skills.com/bulletin.

Should a colleague/friend wish to register to receive one of our regular Bulletins, please ask them to fill in the form at www.e-skills.com/register.

Posted on 12 Jul 2006