UK Tech Sector In Boom Mode

The UK may still be shaking off the last bits of the Great Recession - but the technology sector isn't.

That's the encouraging finding of the latest of consulting firm KPMG's on-going series of reports on the UK economy, Techmonitor.

The report says that in Q4 2014 the UK tech sector enjoyed robust growth, avoiding the slowdown seen across the wider UK economy.

It also finds that tech sector jobs growth actually sped up - "delivering sustained improvements" that now stretch back over a continuous five year period, noting, " Tech companies avoided the wider slowdown in private sector job creation during Q4, and continued to register much sharper rates of new business expansion than the UK economy as a whole."

Meanwhile, the majority (53%), of those contacted expect a rise in business activity over the next 12 months, while only 7% forecast any sort of reduction, while in terms of job growth, small tech companies (those that employ fewer than 50 people) hired additional staff at a "solid pace" during the final quarter of 2014.

A Skills Gap In The Offing?

Survey respondents mostly attributed rising employment to new contract wins and expectations of rising business activity at their units; indeed, so strong is growth that some SMEs in the sector reported ongoing recruitment difficulties, related to strong competition for suitably skilled staff and associated rises in salaries.

The widest performance gap between the tech sector and the rest of the UK economy for almost six years is also reported in the study.