The UK’s IT workforce, including contractors and employees, reached an all time high at the end of 2010, with 1.093m IT workers accounting for 4% of the UK workforce. This is according to the latest e-skills Bulletin for the 4th quarter of 2010, which also revealed demand for IT workers rose for the sixth consecutive quarter.
Total advertised contract and permanent vacancies in the final quarter of 2010 rose to 105,000 whilst the number of IT workers unemployed or seeking contracts and employment fell to 95,000. Despite this disparity, e-skills UK reports no skills shortages were emerging at the end of last year.
IT contractors have experienced sustained demand across a number of job roles and assignment types. Business analysts and developers remain at the top of the long term demand table, closely followed by project managers, software engineers and support staff. Of the 36 contract roles monitored by the Bulletin, 21 saw an increase in demand.
Surprisingly, considering the technical nature of their roles, IT workers undergo considerably less training when compared to the rest of the UK workforce. On average, 27% of UK workers underwent education or training in the final quarter of 2010, whereas the figure for IT workers was an average of 21%. This fell to 15% for small IT firms.
This is a clear incentive for IT contractors to invest in ongoing training and education, as there is clearly an opportunity for contractors to differentiate themselves from other IT workers by adding to their skill set.
Sentiment among small IT firms, including owner-manager contractor limited companies, also improved, bucking the national trend. According to the Federation of Small Businesses, business confidence moved from negative to positive between the third and fourth quarters of 2010, whereas the national picture showed a significant decrease in confidence. And slightly fewer small IT firms went bust in the quarter: IT liquidations fell by 1% against 7% for the UK economy as a whole.
Although the data from e-skills UK shows a few-months-old snapshot of the fast-paced IT sector, it does highlight trends heading in the right direction, and demonstrates the importance of the UK’s knowledge economy.
It also highlights that IT contractors have a clear window of opportunity to invest in education and training to outperform their permanent counterparts.