Nature of employment

Occupation

BAME representation amongst IT specialists in 2023 ranged from just 11% of telecoms engineers to 30% of ‘other’ IT professionals.

BAME representation by IT occupation (2023)

Source: Analysis of ONS Quarterly Labour Force Survey by BCS
* Five-year average

Permanency of employment

Overall, 3% of IT specialists in the UK were working on a non-permanent basis in 2023, whilst for IT specialists from BAME ethnic groups the figure was more than twice this figure (i.e. 7%). By comparison, the proportion of BAME workers as a whole in non-permanent employment at that time was still higher at 10%.

Though a detailed analysis of the reasons why IT specialists (white/BAME) were in non-permanent employment during 2023 is not possible due to limitations of the data source, it can be said that a substantial proportion of BAME IT specialists, and other BAME workers were in temporary positions as they cannot find a full-time job (23% and 20% respectively during the 2019-23 period).

By comparison, a full quarter (25%) of workers as a whole were in non-permanent positions.

Ethnicity and unemployment

There were approximately 17,000 unemployed IT specialists from BAME ethnic groups in the UK during 2023 – 44% of all unemployed IT specialists in the UK at that time.

At 4.0% the associated unemployment rate^[1] for IT specialists from BAME groups was nearly three times higher than that of their white counterparts (1.4%) though well below the overall unemployment rate for the BAME workforce as a whole in the UK (7.1%).

^[1]See data notes.