Technology: year in review

A few hours into the New Year Monday bank holiday, some would have spotted news that gave a timely reminder of how the tech sector has fared in the two years since the start of the pandemic: Apple became the world’s first $3 trillion company, its value rising $1 trillion in under 16 months.

It reflects how demand for tech from consumers, and also for digital infrastructure and solutions from business, soared in 2021 with restrictions still keeping people largely  home — and working remotely. Over this period, Britain’s labour market experienced unprecedented growth in IT vacancies.

New jobs started the year at a clip, with a 23% month-on-month surge in January 2021 — which turned out to be the year’s biggest increase. Vacancies shot up by 105% year-on-year as a whole in 2021, with monthly volumes hitting an all-time peak of over 13,100 vacancies in October.

IT vacancies in tech companies, in particular, have surged — with the data showing that TMT firms in England and Wales published twice the amount of new jobs in the last quarter of 2021 compared to the first in 2019. Across the whole year, TMT companies experienced a 119% year-on-year rise in IT vacancies.

There were more IT vacancies in the TMT sector in 2021 than across all British industries in 2020. This shows how tech businesses are starting to compete directly with bricks-and-mortar establishments — whether Amazon with retail companies, or fintechs against banks.  The proportion of IT vacancies in TMT has grown by 7.3 percentage points since 2016, up from 46.5% to 53.8%.

More money than ever is flowing into UK tech. The sector raised £29.4 billion in 2021, up from £11.5 billion in 2020. The combined value of UK tech companies founded since 2000 is now £540 billion, after the biggest year-on-year increase since 2013/14. Many will wonder whether the industry can sustain this remarkable growth into 2022.