Research from industry skills body e-skills UK has found that IT students have fallen 50 percent in the last five years. The lack of skilled UK IT staff means that 140,000 new recruits need to be found in order to satisfy demand.

At present the IT industry is struggling to recruit the next generation to the profession, as the ‘nerdish’ image of an IT worker puts off many youngsters from entering the industry. The IT industry may rectify this image but this is a long term project. So how can the IT skills gap be plugged in the shorter term? One solution is outsourcing and/or offshoring.

Companies need to fill the gaping hole at the lower-skilled end of the industry immediately. By choosing an offshore supplier, companies can employ low-cost specialists to carry out work that they can’t complete in the UK. The high end management work tends to stay in the UK.

As skills move to low labour cost areas, the UK has to react by developing the skills and competencies necessary to develop new products, designs, technologies etc. so UK companies can create more value. This means better education, training and in particular entrepreneurship.

The UK often tends to develop a mix and match solution or no solution at all. British workers should be educated and employed to take the highest level UK IT jobs. Outsourcing or offshoring can only account for a percentage of the lower skilled work and training / educating the next generation will ensure that the skills gap can be gradually narrowed.