The Northern Digital Jobs Strategy: plugging the skills gap

The strategy was commissioned following the 2017 Digital Skills Action Summit. It was written in partnership with IPPR North, using research from the Centre for Local Economic Strategies to create eight 8 recommendations designed to increase supply of digital tech talent as demand soars.  On average there are around 1.4 job adverts for every digital tech worker per year across the North, and on average they pay 48% more than the wider economy. 712,750 individual digital tech jobs were advertised in across the Northern economy in the three years to 2018.

The Strategy

The following eight initiatives have been devised to solve the skills crisis across the region:

• A Northern Digital Skills Network to connect, coordinate and drive digital skills activity in the North, in line with the Digital Skills Partnership agenda
• The Northern Digital Jobs Portal to drive employers with opportunities, and learners with availability, into one place
• Careers advice so that, no matter what your age, you know there are opportunities in digital
• Making digital mainstream in schools so that the ‘digital skills crisis’ fixes itself long-term
• Encouraging those from underrepresented groups into the digital sector
• The Apprenticeship Levy as a catalyst for changing our attitudes to employability, as well as ensuring that other types of training still count
• A Northern digital jobs awareness campaign to drive people to seek out training and jobs opportunities in the North
• Prioritise skilling up our local workforce to deal with the potential effects of Brexit

All of the above initiatives were developed with attendees at the 2017 Digital Jobs Action Summit.

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