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The total number of jobless was put at 162,000 - but this does not account for workers who have reached retiring age since the second quarter.
The new findings reveal that 50 per cent of the total number out of work are 45 years old or over. Thirteen per cent are now at statutory retirement age (64 years for men and 59 for women).
Sixty-nine per cent of workers currently on the bench are male, a lower than anticipated figure given four in five workers in the ITC sector are men.
The majority of out of work IT professionals were generally located in the South East (20 per cent) or in London (18 per cent). e-skills reported that although ten per cent of those out of work were located in the North West, the region itself is home only to seven per cent of the total UK ICT workforce.
A key message in the summary of the report was that the third quarter of what has been called 'the worst year in IT' continued to depict an 'industry scraping along the bottom of the trough.'
| "Analysts like to think the dramatic decline of 2001 and 2002 was an exception. The staggering growth of 1998 to 2000 was the exception" | | Julian Hewett, Ovum |
Other findings identified demand for permanent and freelance ICT workers continued to fall up to September, the last month the report drew data from. It cited the latest Skills Sector Panel survey, which reported decreases of 20 and 25 per cent for the permanent and freelance sectors respectively.
Recent data from the Recruitment and Employment Confederation (REC) showed the agency market is also 'still firmly in depression,' according to e-skills.
In the case of the freelance sector, which has experienced 20 straight months of decline, questions continue to be asked as to when demand will resurface - with no answers being readily offered.
The report found there has been less competition in the marketplace leading to a further drop in advertised rates across the board, with freelancers again taking the worst hit with a four per cent drop in average rates over the last quarter.
Some figures from the report:
(Source: ONS Labour Force Survey)
| Out-of-work ICT staff by work status, Q3.2002 | | Total | 162,000 | | Working age, of which: | 140,000 | | Unemployed/seeking work | 56,000 | | Inactive & not looking for but wanting work | 20,000 | | Inactive & not looking for/wanting work(sick) | 11,000 | | Inactive & not looking for/wanting work(caring) | 15,000 | | Inactive & not looking for/wanting work(other) | 20,000 | | Retired | 19,000 |
e-skills' report also focussed on the different, sometimes conflicting, viewpoints from market analysts over recent months.
In September, International Data Corp. (IDC) said the IT sector was riding a business cycle on which it had 'passed by a paradigm, risen on a bubble and was now left slumped by the side of the road somewhere.' This was to be translated as: 'the worst being over and a modest upturn during the final months of 2002 followed by growth in 2003 of around four per cent,' according to e-skills.
Meanwhile, AMR Research suggested IT budgets were likely to remain flat for 2003, where, in the Ovum Holloway encampment, budgets were forecast to drop further. Estimates for the European software market have had to be revised down with a decline in market growth for 2002 to four per cent and zero growth anticipated next year, the group said in September.
| Out-of-work ICT staff by last occupation, Q3.2002 | | ICT Managers | 20,000 | | IT Strategy & Planning | 15,000 | | Software Professionals | 31,000 | | Operations Technicians | 15,000 | | User Support Technicians/Computer Engineers | 20,000 | | Database Assistants | 25,000 | | Telecoms Engineers/Line Repairers/Cable Jointers | 18,000 |
Julian Hewett, Chief Analyst at Ovum, said at the time: "the overriding problem is that the industry and its analysts like to think the dramatic decline of 2001 and 2002 was an exception. It was not. The staggering growth of 1998 to 2000 was the exception."
Despite clients' searching to cut costs and introducing recruitment freezes, core technical skills remained unchanged.
SQL, C++, Unix, Oracle, C, Windows NT, Java, Visual Basic and MS Office were all reported to have been in demand. In addition, there has also been a consistently high level of demand over the past year for SAP and Windows 2000 (for freelancers); and SQL Server and TCP/IP skills (for permanent posts).
This said, it should be noted that demand for TCP/IP as a percentage of all (permanent) advertisements, has decreased in each of the past four quarters. Other skills for which demand has increased in the last two successive quarters are: Freehand, OLAP, Smalltalk, BPCS and EPOS (for permanent posts) together with JDBC, JSP, EPOS, VPN, VBA and Switches (for freelance projects).
In its previous quarterly report, e-skills UK's main message was to urge the Government to broaden training courses for IT students or risk losing business to international competitors.
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Richard Powell, © Shout99.com 2002
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