The Department of Culture, Media and Sport has released their 2022 "Cyber Security Skills in the UK Labour Market" report.

The Cyber Security Sills in the UK Labour Market 2022 report 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 a mixture of:

• representative surveys with cyber sector businesses and the wider population of UK organisations (businesses, charities and public sector organisations – with this summary focusing on businesses)
• qualitative research with recruitment agents, cyber firms and large organisations in various sectors
• a secondary analysis of cyber security job postings on the Burning Glass Technologies database, as well as recruitment pool data originating from the Higher Education Statistics Authority (HESA)

This is the fourth iteration of the research, which has been carried out on a roughly annual basis.

This work is part of the government’s £2.6 billion National Cyber Strategy to protect and promote the UK online. In particular it informs the government’s work to strengthen the UK’s cyber ecosystem by enhancing and expanding the nation’s cyber skills at every level.

Key findings from this year’s report include:

• 697,000 businesses (51%) have a basic cyber skills gap (50% in 2021)
• 451,000 businesses (33%) have an advanced cyber skills gap (33% in 2021)
• 22% of the cyber sector workforce is female (versus 30% in all digital sectors)
• 25% of the workforce come from ethnic minority backgrounds (versus 15% in all digital sectors)
• 10% of the workforce are neurodivergent
• On average 4,400 core cyber job postings each month in 2021 (58% increase from previous year)
• 44% of job vacancies reported as hard to fill (up from 37% in 2021)
• Geographic demand hotspots include London, Manchester, Bristol and Birmingham.

You can view the full report via this link https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/cyber-security-skills-in-the-uk-labour-market-2022.