The Fastest Growing Skills in the Four Nations of the United Kingdom

In the last Shedding Light on the Labour Market, @EMSI_UK look at job postings from the perspective of regional employer demand. 

In this fortnight’s Shedding Light on the Labour Market, we take a look at which hard skills have seen the biggest percentage growth throughout this year.

As with our last piece, we are once again using Emsi’s Job Posting Analytics, which harvests employer hiring data across the country from tens of thousands of job boards, to identify the skills that employers are looking for.

The interactive chart below shows the four nations of the UK, identifying the Top 15 fastest growing skills since the start of the year until the end of October:

The fastest growing skill by far has been Personal Protective Equipment, having grown by 82.8% in England, 105.9% in Scotland, and 201.9% in Wales, which is clearly reflective of how the Covid-19 situation has effected the economy. Interestingly though, it does not make it into the Top 15 in Northern Ireland, where Warehousing tops the chart having grown by 71.7% throughout the year.

Skills related to health and social care are prominent in all four nations. For instance, Social Work, Nursing and Mental Health appear on the charts for all four nations, whilst Pharmaceuticals and Learning Disabilities show up on three of the four.

Outside of health and social care, there are a couple of prominent skills that reflect the changing nature of retail this year. For example, Warehousing is the third fastest growing skill in England (49.7% growth), Wales (102.5%), and Scotland (69.8%), and as we have already mentioned, the first fastest growing in Northern Ireland. In addition, Amazon Web Services shows up in the Top 15 in England (12.1%), Scotland (69.8%) and Northern Ireland (68.2%), but not in Wales.

Whilst all the skills that appear in the Top 15 for England also appear in the Top 15 of at least one other nation, there are a number of skills which appear only in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland:

• Wales – Child Protection; Career Development; Psychology; and Information Privacy
• Scotland – Cooking; New Product Development; and Service Delivery
• Northern Ireland – React.js; Data Analysis; Java (Programming Language)

The prevalence of computing skills in Northern Ireland is especially striking. Along with the three mentioned in the list above, the Top 15 also includes Amazon Web Services; Microsoft Azure; Software Engineering; Python (Programming Language); Data Analysis; and Automation.

But perhaps the most striking thing about the charts is that the fastest growth in job postings has been in Wales. All of the 15 skills on the Welsh chart have grown by more than 50% this year, with three growing by over 100%. By contrast, just three of the top skills in England have grown by over 50%, seven in Scotland, and six in Northern Ireland.

Last week, the Recruitment Employment Confederation (REC) used Emsi data to show where employer demand has been highest since the initial Lockdown in the regions throughout the country. Wales was shown to be second only to the North West in job postings growth during that time, whilst a number of English regions, most notably London, have seen an overall fall during that time.

Watch out for the next piece in this regular series on 2^nd December. 

To find out more about how the crisis is affecting your local area, contact Emsi for more info.