Study – UK Telecoms Industry Ranked 13th Most in Need of Workers
A new study of job listings on employment hunting site Indeed claims to have identified the top 25 UK industries most in need of workers, which among other things reveals that the telecommunications (broadband, Ethernet and mobile etc.) sector ranks 13th overall with 3,352 job listings. But Healthcare dominates.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) recently reported that the number of job vacancies in March to May 2022 rose to a new record of 1.3 million and, according to the latest study by Claims.co.uk, the Healthcare industry is the one most in need of workers (69,399 listings on Indeed).
However, many UK sectors are currently suffering from staff shortages – particularly those that require people with pre-existing skills in specific fields, and telecommunications is no exception. As most people will already know, network operators and ISPs are currently busy upgrading their full fibre (FTTP), gigabit-capable broadband and 5G mobile infrastructure across the UK, which is driving demand for engineers.
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At present there is a well-known shortage of skilled fibre engineers in the market, which has resulted in operators and contractors investing more money into training programmes. But these will take time to turn out the necessary workers and won’t solve the immediate challenges overnight.
On top of that, the ISPs that rely on such networks in order to sell their services directly to consumers and businesses also need to hire new staff to help them grow around the new infrastructure, such as in roles that cover everything from support to sales and logistics etc.
The table below is by no means a definitive overview of this challenge, and it’s no doubt hobbled by the limited coverage of Indeed’s own website, yet it does perhaps provide a useful indication. But one caveat is the lack of historical data, which would be needed to better understand how today’s market compares with the pre-full fibre era.
| Rank | Industry | Total Vacancies (08/06 – 21/06/2022) |
| 1 | Healthcare | 69,399 |
| 2 | Retail & Wholesale | 33,587 |
| 3 | Human Resources & Staffing | 27,971 |
| 4 | Education | 17,582 |
| 5 | Restaurants & Food Service | 11,639 |
| 6 | Construction, Repair & Maintenance Services | 11,455 |
| 7 | Government & Public Administration | 9,674 |
| 8 | Manufacturing | 7,187 |
| 9 | Non-Profit & NGO | 6,525 |
| 10 | Finance | 4,640 |
| 11 | Transportation & Logistics | 4,295 |
| 12 | Hotel & Travel Accommodation | 3,574 |
| 13 | Telecommunications | 3,352 |
| 14 | Real Estate | 3,034 |
| 15 | Energy, Mining, Utilities | 2,716 |
| 16 | Information Technology | 2,344 |
| 17 | Management & Consulting | 2,057 |
| 18 | Personal Customer Services | 1,706 |
| 19 | Media & Communication | 1,590 |
| 20 | Arts, Entertainment & Recreation | 1,361 |
| 21 | Aerospace & Defence | 1,129 |
| 22 | Pharmaceutical & Biotechnology | 1,026 |
| 23 | Insurance | 1,017 |
| 24 | Agriculture | 937 |
| 25 | Legal | 712 |
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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A % of vacancies vs full staffing level would be more meaningful than just raw number of vacancies.
This is what happens when most kids go to university to study useless degrees, either they feel too entitled to do menial jobs or they are too stupid to do STEM work.
The unemployment rate is really low so that doesn’t work.
I’m guessing you didn’t get a top-notch qualification with reasoning like that!
@An Engineer
The government achieved that by blurring the lines between unemployment and self employment.
I’m always dubious of these jobsite vacancy totals in view of multiple agencies posting for the same job. Also I wonder if the same job posted on numerous days counts as 1 job or several jobs?
Most ISP’s have high turnover for a reason …Support is still seen as a menial near janitorial task within IT industry as a whole and the wages paid are as low as possible.
This needs to change unless we are going to accept poor service with poor support.
For the most part this is the only aspect that customers have a one to one connection with a given provider, if it is poor or worse chances are you’ll loose that customer at the earliest opportunity provided to that customer regardless of what you try to sell them.
I’ve worked in ISP support and have had to manage residential and business connections, I enjoyed it to begin with but it was very obvious that i’d never get a pay rise and the option to get promoted was also very low regardless of the suggestions I made (that were implemented) and the fact I repeatedly assisted network engineers with issues.
I moved on to enterprise support and am now on slightly better pay but still it’s “just above standard”, collecting certificates and will get a couple of job offers to put the employer in the corner but I am expecting to be told “sorry but no”.
Loyalty is not a commodity used by many IT companies unless you’re in middle to upper management, below that you are fodder and expendable.
This needs to change.