A third of digital employers say candidates are asking for too much money
With technical skills in demand, salary growth is an issue for employers. Of the 2,700 survey respondents (roughly half of them CEOs) over a third said that candidates are asking for more money than they can afford to pay.
There are currently 1.64m digital tech jobs, according to data from BSD and Tech City UK. That’s 6% of UK jobs, half of which are within digital tech companies, and half that are digital tech roles within more traditional companies.
The growth rate of digital jobs between 2011 and 2015 was 17%, compared to just 8% growth in non-digital sectors.
As you can see from the chart below, salary growth in digital (13% since 2012) is also outpacing that of traditional roles (4% over the same time span). The average digital salary was 44% higher than the average non-digital salary in 2015.
The UK as European hub for digital skills
In 2016 the UK secured £6.8bn venture capital and private equity digital tech investment. As you can see from the chart below, that is more than France, Germany and the Netherlands combined.
TechCity’s research shows that London has almost almost twice as many Github users as Paris or Berlin, highlighting its dominance in European software development.
There are obvious worries, though, about the impact of Brexit, considering 13% of digital tech employees in the UK are from abroad (up from 11% in 2011), compared to 10% in other sectors.
In London and the South East, though, digital tech employees from abroad make up a massive 31% of the workforce (11% EU nationals and 20% non-EU nationals). These figures are taken from Tech City’s forthcoming published research.
Nearly 5% growth of the UK digital tech sector in 2015
The UK’s digital tech sector grew 50% faster than the economy as a whole in 2015 (4.8% versus 3.2%).
What’s more, the gross value added (GVA) by each digital tech worker is considerably greater than that of a non-digital worker – £103,000 compared to £50,000 (based on 2015 data from ABS / BSD).
Cambridge an emerging hotspot
There’s lots more in the Tech Nation report, which serves as another timely reminder to the Government of the continued success of the digital tech sector in the UK.
The report profiles many other important areas of the UK with burgeoning tech scenes, and highlights Cambridge as the place, outside of London, with the largest number of Github users (4,000 – 8th in Europe-wide rankings).
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