Around the UK - North West

Led by our North West representative, e-skills UK has been working with key partners in the region to deliver on the objectives outlined in our SSA for IT Action Plan.

Background Research

The North West ranks 4th amongst the nine English regions according to the size of its IT workforce – with 58,836 employees in the IT industry and 58,035 IT professionals working across other sectors, making a total North West IT workforce of 116,871.

In addition, out of a general workforce of some 2.98 million, an estimated 1.929 million people in the region use IT in their day to day work.

Employers in the North West identified that by 2008, 133,000 business managers will need to improve their routine IT user skills and 80,000 will need to improve their IT professional skills.

For the current IT user workforce there is a need for the upskilling of up to 291,000 people, 115,000 to address current gaps and 176,000 to address the 2008 forecast.

These findings were taken from e-skills UK 2005 'IT Insights: Regional Skills in the North West' report. The report is one of a set of 11 reports for the nine English regions, Scotland and Wales, which can be downloaded free of charge at www.e-skills.com/itinsights.

NB - We have just carried out some extensive research to provide an update on the IT Insights 2004-05 data. The headline report 'Technology Counts: IT and Telecoms Insights 2008' is now available to download at www.e-skills.com/insights08. A suite of 'IT & Telecoms Insights 2008: Regional/National Skills Analysis' reports are being finalised and will be available at a later date.

Last modified: 17 Oct 2008