Employers across the United Kingdom accelerated their search for information technology (IT) workers to close out 2020, according to a new report from CompTIA.
The CompTIA UK IT Employment Snapshot reveals that job postings for core IT positions totalled 198,805 in the first quarter of 2020. That was an increase of more than 32,000 from the third quarter and nearly equal to the pre-pandemic number in the first quarter.
CompTIA’s vice president for skills certification in EMEA Graham Hunter, said that after a sharp decline in the second quarter IT job postings steadily increased during the last six months of 2020 even though the uncertainty brought on by COVID-19 and the effects of the Brexit-EU trade deal continue.
“The upswing is encouraging because 2020 fourth quarter IT job postings were up 17 percent from the same period in 2019, and the growth happened during a time of year when we typically see a lower number of help-wanted ads”, Hunter said.
IT positions claimed an 11 percent share of the 1.79 million postings in the fourth quarter.
Openings for software developers and programmers accounted for 40 percent of the total fourth quarter job ads (79,138), according to CompTIA’s analysis of data from Burning Glass Technologies Labour Insights.
Other in-demand positions included IT business analysts, architects and system designers (31,347), IT user support technicians (19,579), IT and telecommunications professionals (17,338), web design and development professionals (17,320) and IT operations technicians (16,081).
Senior director, research and market intelligence, CompTIA’s Amy Carradom, said: The continuing need to support remote workers and work from home employees across many industries contributes to the strong demand for a mix of hardware and software skills. This is true for companies that employ internal IT teams and for those that rely on the expertise of technology firms and partners.”
The UK’s IT workforce totalled more than 1.3 million workers in 2020. Top industries employing IT workers include information and communication; professional, scientific and technical; financial and insurance; wholesale and retail trade; and manufacturing.
Work area locations with the high local demand for IT professionals included London, Bristol, Leeds, Belfast and Edinburgh.
Job posting data should not be viewed as a forecast of future hiring since every posting does not result in a new hire. Rather, it is an indicator of where companies are headed with their technology investments and deployments.
