IT sector 'growing at fastest rate since recession'

The UK IT sector is growing at its fastest rate since the recession and is creating new jobs at more than four times the rate of the rest of the economy, an accountancy firm calculates.

According to Nixon Williams, 143,450 IT enterprises were ‘active’ in 2014, a 7.4% jump on the previous year. The UK’s stock of IT jobs is also up -- from 403,000 (in 2009) to 459,000.

Putting the 13.9% increase in IT jobs in context, the firm pointed out that the number of jobs across the UK economy rose over the same five-year period by just 3.1%.

Meanwhile the number of jobs in financial services – which often competes with IT for top candidates – actually plummeted by 16% (from 1.2m in 2009 to 986,000 in 2014).

Nixon Williams said it based the findings, which it released last month, on data it obtained from a variety of reports published by the Office of National Statistics.

“The need to rebalance the economy away from financial services became apparent during the financial crisis, and these latest figures show that the tech sector is rising to the challenge,” said the firm’s practice manager Martin Brennan.

He added: “Talent that might have previously gravitated towards financial services is now just as likely to be looking for equity in a tech start-up – something which has not been seen on this scale since the dot com boom.

“This is particularly true in London, where a lot of talent has poured into tech start-ups that might otherwise have found a home in [the] traditionally high-paying banking sector”.