Skills

Qualifications held

IT specialists are more highly qualified than other UK workers and in 2020, more than two thirds (70%) were thought to hold some form of higher-level qualification, compared with just under five in ten workers as a whole (49%).

Overall, disabled IT specialists were also found to be more highly qualified than other workers with disabilities and in 2020, approximately 64% of IT specialists with disabilities held a degree / HE level qualification, compared 41% of workers with disabilities in other occupations.

Level of educational attainment amongst IT specialists (2020)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS

IT specialists with disabilities are marginally less likely to hold a degree in an IT related discipline than others working in such occupations. In 2020, approximately 15% of disabled IT specialists were thought to have either a higher / undergraduate computing degree in IT compared with 16% of those without disabilities.

IT specialists holding computing degrees (2020)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS

Skills development

Despite the arguably high skill / knowledge requirements associated with their work, IT specialists as a whole in the UK do not appear any more likely than other workers to receive job-related education / training and throughout 2020, on average 24% of IT specialists stated that they had received some form of job-related education / training in the previous 13 weeks (i.e. as was the case for workers as a whole).

For disabled IT specialists, however, the proportion receiving education / training was notably higher (30%) - both when compared with disabled workers in other occupations (26%) and with other IT specialists without disabilities (23%).

Job-related education / training in the past 13 weeks (2020)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS

Skills sourcing

As with other UK employees, the most common identifiable means of IT specialists^[4] securing a job (where stated) is ‘replying to an advertisement’ with 33% of those that had been with their employer for less than one year over the 2016-20 period stating they had secured work in this manner.

The next most common means of IT specialists securing a job was via a private recruitment agency, followed by contacts already working with the employer and then direct application. The likelihood of finding work by different means appeared to be much the same for IT specialists with / without disabilities.

Means of finding work amongst IT specialists (2016-2020)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS

^[4] Employees / people on government schemes who have been with their current employer for less than one year/12 months prior to being interviewed for the LFS.