Data science, data protection and tech jobs are dominating the UK recruitment market, according to an analysis of LinkedIn users’ profiles, with artificial intelligence and machine learning roles leading the way.
LinkedIn’s "2020 Job Trends Report" is based on all members with a public profile who have held a full-time position in the past five years. The company then calculates the share of hiring and compound annual growth rate for each occupation between 2015 and 2019.
The study shows that the role of AI specialist is the number one emerging job in the UK, although LinkedIn concedes this should not come as a big surprise. It cites McKinsey research, which predicted that AI could potentially deliver a 22% boost to the UK economy by 2030.
The other major recruitment drive has been for data protection officers, on the back of GDPR. The analysis shows that there has been a 2,300% rise in DPOs in the UK since 2015, although this number obviously started from a low base.
Other fast-growing jobs include roles for data scientists, robotics engineers, cyber security specialists, cloud engineers and content designers.
While almost 33% of people working in emerging jobs are currently employed by tech companies and businesses in the computer software industry, the pharmaceutical sector has the highest year-on-year growth (up 49%). This is followed closely by consumer goods companies (48%) and higher education (48%).
Non-tech industries are also showing year-on-year growth in hiring for these emerging jobs, with sectors such as marketing, HR and aviation making the top 10, as well as higher education and research.
However, one age-old problem continues; this year’s report shows a distinct gender gap. Currently, over 65% of all these emerging roles, across all the industries employing them, are held by males, with financial services (80:20) and telecoms (81:19) having the greatest imbalance.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, London also dominates, with over 44% of professionals working in these emerging roles being based in the capital. Even so, cities like Belfast (+39%), Cardiff (+35%), and Nottingham (+35%) had the largest year-on-year growth.
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