Research and analysis

Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2024

Research detailing skills needs and job vacancies across the UK cyber security sector.

• From: Department for Science, Innovation and Technology and Feryal Clark MP
• Published: 16 September 2024

Documents

Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2024

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Cyber security skills in the UK labour market 2024: technical report

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Details

This is research into the UK cyber security labour market, carried out on behalf of the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT). The research explores the nature and extent of cyber security skills gaps (people lacking appropriate skills) and skills shortages (a lack of people available to work in cyber security job roles) using:

• Representative surveys of cyber sector businesses and the wider population of UK organisations (businesses, charities and public sector organisations).
• Qualitative research with recruitment agents, cyber firms and medium/large organisations in various sectors.
• A secondary analysis of cyber security job postings on the Lightcast labour market database, as well as reviewing the supply of cyber security talent through sources such as the Higher Education Statistics Authority (HESA) and Jisc.

This year’s report finds:

• Across the economy, around half (44%) of businesses have skills gaps in basic technical areas. Incident management skills gaps have increased from 27% in 2020 to 48% in 2024.
• Demand for cyber security professionals has fallen, with core cyber job postings decreasing by 32% between 2002 and 2023. There have been challenging macroeconomic factors and job cuts in the technology sector, but cyber security has been more resilient than the wider digital sector.
• The UK has made significant improvements in training new potential talent for the cyber security labour market and the number of cyber security graduates has increased by 34%.

This is the sixth iteration of the research, which has been carried out on an approximately annual basis. You can see the previous versions of this report below:

• Cyber security skills in the uk labour market 2023
• Cyber security skills in the uk labour market 2022
• Cyber security skills in the uk labour market 2021
• Cyber security skills in the uk labour market 2020
• Cyber security skills in the uk labour market (December 2018)

This research is part of the government’s work to protect our digital economy and deliver growth.

Published 16 September 2024