Diversity 2023: the missing 756,000

BCS produces four reports from the ONS data on IT work in the UK, covering age, gender, disability and ethnicity. The first thing we can easily draw conclusions about is the employment of under-represented groups. In three areas, it doesn’t look good – and it’s complicated in the other.

This is what the first three areas tell us:

• If gender representation in IT were equal to the workforce 'norm' there would be an additional 527,000 IT specialists in the UK
• Of the 1.9m IT specialists based in the UK in 2022, just 22% (416,000) were aged 50 or above, and if representation of this age group in IT were equal to the workforce 'norm' there would be an additional 141,000 IT specialists in the UK
• If representation in IT were equal to the workforce 'norm' there would be an additional 88,000 IT specialists in the UK with disabilities

The fourth area, the unemployment rate of for ethnic minorities, is roughly where population data indicates it should be – although there are disparities between ethnicities that were noted in last year’s ‘Experience of Black Women in IT’ report, and that disparity continues.

Overall, the data shows that there are 756,000 people that could be making IT good for society – and who could be adding much needed diversity (and diversity of thought) to IT teams.

Women in IT

The biggest disparity has always been gender in the workforce. This is the trend over the last five years:

• There were 380,000 female IT specialists in the UK in 2022 (20%)
• There were 356,000 female IT specialists in the UK in 2021 (20%)
• There were 312,000 female IT specialists in the UK workforce during 2020 (19%)
• There were 249,000 female IT specialists in the UK workforce during 2019 (17%)
• There were 226,000 female IT specialists in the UK workforce during 2018 (16%)

At first glance this looks like (limited) progress. However, if we go back a little farther, previous ONS census data shows that in 1981, 19% of the IT workforce was female; in 2011, it was 19.2%. The highest recorded proportion of women in the IT workforce sat at 20.9% in 1991. Data from the Labour Force Survey further shows that even in 1975 there was 19.7% representation of women in IT – dropping to 16.8% in 1977.

For you

Be part of something bigger, join BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

So where do we reasonably extrapolate the direction of travel? If we base our conclusions solely on the trend indicated by the last three years, it will take just 19 years to achieve gender parity in the IT workforce — however, a straight-line graph from 2005 to 2023 shows it will take around 280 years.

Amongst the brighter spots in the data, the unemployment rate for female IT specialists in 2022 was 1.4% — less than that for males (1.7%) and less than half the rate for women as a whole within the UK labour market (3.6%). The level of female representation in IT also varies by job type — from around one in twenty IT engineers (6% of the total over the 2018-22 period), to around one in three IT project/programme managers (30%).

Age

For people aged 50 and above the figures were also thought-provoking. This group accounted for 31% of the working age population in 2022, but of the 1.9m IT specialists based in the UK in 2022, just 22% (416,000) were aged 50 or above. There should be an additional 141,000 IT specialists in that age range.

The picture was better for IT directors and project/programme managers (32% and 31% respectively) – in line with the wider UK picture. Additionally, older IT specialists are notably more likely to hold ‘responsible positions’, with almost half (48%) having managerial/supervisory status in their job compared with 41% of younger IT specialists.

Ethnicity

As indicated above, the data on ethnicity are more complicated, encompassing both over-representation and under-representation.

As a headline, at 20%, BAME representation was higher amongst IT specialists than within the workforce as a whole (15%) in 2022. In total there were 376,000 BAME IT specialists in the UK at that time.

This representation varied significantly among IT specialists across the UK — from just 5% in Wales, the North East and Northern Ireland to 36% in London.

In terms of job type, BAME representation amongst IT specialists in 2022 was highest amongst IT programmers/developers (25%), and the unemployment rate for BAME IT specialists, at 1.2%, was lower than that of their ethnically white counterparts (1.7%).

Also in 2022, BAME IT specialists (full-time employees) were earning 11% more than those of white ethnicity, with median hourly rates of £26 and £23 per hour. However, they were less likely to be in ‘positions of responsibility’ than those of white ethnicity, with 36% and 41% respectively stating that they were a manager/foreman or team leader in 2022.

Almost nine in ten BAME IT specialists have an HE level qualification (86%) compared with less than seven in ten (67%) of those from white ethnic groups.

Disability

This year BCS have published a report focusing on the experience of neurodiverse and disabled people in IT. For an industry that provides some interesting assistance for those in these groups, the employment figures are not as they should be. People with disabilities accounted for 22% of the working age population in 2022, but only 16% of the total UK workforce, with IT lagging even further behind — the 208,000 IT specialists in the UK with disabilities in 2022 represented just 11% of all IT specialists in the UK.

Worryingly, despite a focus in recent years on EDI, approximately 29% of all unemployed IT specialists in the UK had some form of disability during 2022, and the associated unemployment rate (4.2%) was notably higher than that recorded for IT specialists as a whole (1.6%).

In 2022 approximately 63% of IT specialists with disabilities held a degree/HE level qualification compared with 45% of workers with disabilities as a whole.

One noteworthy positive: IT specialists with disabilities are more likely to receive job-related education/ training, with 32% stating it had been received in the previous 13 weeks during 2022 (compared with 25% of those without disabilities).

Dig deeper

The full versions of these four ONS analysis reports are available on the BCS website. The ethnicity section looks more closely at the data on different ethnicities, and offers further insight on the representation of black women in IT following on from 2022’s ‘The Experience of Black Women in IT’ report.

The full report ‘The Experience of Neurodiverse and Disabled People In IT 2023’ is also free to view. This looks at personal experiences, barriers to work, mitigations, the benefits neurodiverse and disabled people offer in IT and the workforce and a look at the good, bad and ugly in assistive tech.