UK tech job vacancies up 21% to a pre-pandemic high despite AI layoff fears

In brief: All we seem to hear about these days is how AI is going to leave everyone jobless and the relentless wave of companies laying people off. But there's finally a bit of good news to celebrate. In the UK, tech vacancies have risen 21%, reaching their highest levels since before the pandemic.

According to new data from Accenture, a global professional services company specializing in IT services and consulting, the UK's tech talent pool has expanded to its highest level since 2019.

Somewhat ironically, even though AI has already cost many people their jobs, there has been a 200% year-on-year increase in demand for workers with AI skills across UK cities.

Unsurprisingly, London remains the prime location of IT experts. The capital accounted for nearly two-thirds (65%) of the UK's technology vacancies and 80% of the demand.

There's also been a significant rise in the number of people describing themselves as having tech skills – up 53% annually. There are now 1.69 million professionals in the country who report having skills such as cyber, data, and robotics. That's especially good news in a market where some tech experts are warned their abilities are becoming obsolete in the face of generative AI.

Continuing with Gen AI, businesses are increasing their investment in upskilling staff to use the technology. Once again, London leads the way in this area, with 58% of businesses increasing their investment, compared to 40% outside of the city. London-based companies said they would allocate a fifth of their tech budgets to AI this year.

Accenture used data collected from LinkedIn in the first and second week of February 2025, along with a survey of more than 4,000 people.

This is the second piece of AI-related positive news for workers this week. Consultancy firm PwC found that within sectors in which AI can be used for certain tasks – including the software industry – productivity and wage growth have increased at a faster rate than others. The caveat was that vacancies in professions that might use AI have been growing at a slower pace compared to other sectors.

While the report is focused on the UK jobs market, it's still a welcome bit of good news for anyone worried about the AI jobs threat. It comes soon after Duolingo and Klarna, which had been so-called AI-first companies, both said they were scaling back their use of the technology as it could not replace humans.

There are still plenty of warning signs about AI's impact. Last month, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said that it could wipe out about half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next five years, leading to unemployment spikes up to 20%. Meanwhile, Google CEO Sundar Pichai and his counterpart at Microsoft, Satya Nadella, have both said AI is creating 25-30% of all new code at the companies.