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IT loses the 'shortage' tag

Andrew Clennell,Clayton Hirst
Sunday 29 September 2002 00:00 BST
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The Home Office has quietly removed IT from its "skills shortage list", angering technology companies that claim it could make recruitment more onerous.

The move prevents IT companies from recruiting professionals directly from overseas markets such as India, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand.

Instead, employers will now have to advertise all IT jobs in national newspapers or trade journals before looking at candidates abroad. But leading technology companies claim that the Government's definition of "IT skills" is too narrow and that there is still a shortage of workers in some parts of the industry.

Greg Stroud, the UK head of US computer giant Sun Microsystems, said: "I think that the Government should take a longer-term perspective on this. Yes, the IT industry is in a recession right now. But I am concerned that the Government has put all the IT skills into one great cauldron. At the higher end of the industry – research and development, for example – shortages still exist."

Lindsey Armstrong, a vice-president at Veritas, the world's fourth-largest software company, said: "IT is a very broad industry with different strands. Within its definition, the Government needs to identify areas... where there are still shortages."

Ms Armstrong added that one sector still on a "growth trajectory" was data storage. "It is very difficult to hire good people in this area," she said.

During the technology boom of 1999 and 2000, more than 30,000 foreign workers were brought in and the IT profession was put on the "shortage list". But with the sudden downturn the Association of Technology Staffing Companies predicts that around 30 per cent of UK IT contractors are now out of work.

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