Demand for foreign born tech talent grows by nearly a third in just one year

Web designers and developers most sought after

Demand for foreign born tech talent grows by nearly a third in just one year

Despite impressions to the contrary, the number of work permits issued for foreign IT professionals increased by nearly 13,000 during 2022

The UK's tech skills gap shows no sign of closing, with numerous factors including but not limited to; Brexit, the pandemic, new tax rules on off-payroll working, the UK education system being seemingly unable to teach tech skills to the required standard or able to inspire young people to consider a tech career in the first place, all playing a part.

UK birth rates have been trending down for more than 50 years but the UK (and, it has to be said a great many of our European neighbours) seems to be unable to make a positive case to the electorate for economic immigration, preferring to pander to hostile anti-immigration sentiment which ramps up the hostility with every concession.

This is unfortunate for many reasons, but one is that data obtained from the Home Office under the Freedom of Information Act reveals that the number of work permits issued to foreign tech professionals jumped from 39,899 in 2021 to 52,686 in 2022, the highest level in five years. The category which saw the largest percentage increase was web design and development professionals where the number of work permits issued surged by 76% between 2021 and 2022 from 717 to 1,261.

Incoherent policy

Earlier in the year, Computing spoke with technology entrepreneur and philanthropist Ewan Kirk about, among other subjects, UK immigration policy, and how it could be tailored to improve the supply of tech skills that the country so desperately needs if we are to keep our status as a global leader in technology. Kirk was scathing about what he considers to be the incoherence of the present administrations approach.

"The incoherence drives me nuts," he said. "We want to be a tech hub. We want to be Silicon Valley. How did Silicon Valley get to be Silicon Valley? By attracting talent from everywhere.

"We just don't have enough people, and there are only two ways of tackling that. You can make huge efforts to train people to become mathematicians, programmers, and statisticians. It would be nice to see some effort there but it's not enough to fill the gap."

It will also take time, which as a country we simply don't have the luxury of, given the rapidly accelerating pace of global tech development. However there are some aspects of our education systems that can provide faster results. Our university system is globally highly regarded, and as Kirk points out, that is when we really are attracting the brightest and the best and charging them thousands of pounds a year for the privilege. After having educated foreign born students to the highest standard we then tell them to leave when we could be inviting them to stay and benefiting from the talent our education system helped to hone. These people could help our tech starts-ups to scale and would be paying taxes into UK plc.

The government appears bent on doing the exact opposite. This summer, the Home Office announced changes to restrict the ability of student visa holders in the UK to switch into work visa routes. A further announcement earlier this month specified that graduate visas, which allow foreign born graduates to remain in the UK for at least two years after successfully completing a course and to work in most jobs, are to be 'reviewed' with a view to further restrictions being implemented.

Ewan Kirk also doesn't think that arbitrary caps on migration numbers work and that the market should be allowed to find its own level. The surge in the number of work permits issued to tech workers suggests strongly that the market for tech skills will throw off any attempts to try to regulate it.

The report on the rising demand for foreign born tech talent was published by Integro Accounting. The firm says that the clampdown on immigration by the government could limit the ability of some employers to sponsor work permits for less highly remunerated roles, exacerbating hiring difficulties and driving up pay at the lower end of the scale.

Christian Hickmott, Managing Director of Integro Accounting, commented: "The UK's chronic underproduction of tech talent is making us increasingly reliant on foreign IT professionals to plug skills gaps."

He continued: "Increasing the salary threshold from £26,200 to £38,700 for work visas will likely exclude some of the tech occupations in which there has been a sharp rise in visas issued over the past year. Many foreign nationals could be excluded by the raised salary threshold, particularly for roles outside London."