State of the Tech Workforce UK

CompTIA’s State of the Tech Workforce UK provides an in-depth look at employment, economic impact, technology trends, salaries, hiring activity and more across the regions and metropolitan areas of the United Kingdom.

Net tech employment in the United Kingdom reached an estimated 2,043,622 workers in 2022, a 1% increase over the previous year. Net tech employment is projected to increase by almost 1% in 2023. See full report PDF for details.

The top four metropolitan areas employ a little more than 662,350 tech industry and tech occupation workers, or about 1 in 3 tech workers in the nation. At more than 8%, London, Leeds, and Edinburgh have the highest concentration of net tech employment as a percentage of the overall employment base. Compared to the national tech employment concentration benchmark of 6.3%, seven metro areas had a higher rate, confirming the importance of technology to a far-reaching set of cities across the UK.

Among the components of net tech employment, the tech sector side of the equation grew at 1.1% year over year, while the occupation side across all industry sectors experienced a gain of 1.0% year over year. Looking ahead, tech sector and tech occupation gains are projected to be 0.9% and 0.8% respectively.

Employer job posting data provides another layer of insight into the tech job market outlook. Overall quarterly tech job postings among U.K. employers dipped during 2020 due to the pandemic slowdown. Postings rebounded in Q1 2021. Job postings have seen in a decline in the last two quarters of 2022.

A large, dynamic base of business establishments, also referred to as company locations, is another measure of a healthy tech sector. Tech business establishments tend to be concentrated in population centers and in locations that are close to the customers they serve.

Read more about IT Workforce.