Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, what recent estimate he has made of the number of people employed in the IT workforce (a) now and (b) in 2022.

There are various definitions of the sector. Where the ICT sector is defined as the UN and OECD definition of ICT and Content and Media there were 1.3m jobs in the ICT sector in 2013 which uses the latest figures available for the sector. This definition incorporates manufacturing of computers, communication equipment and consumer electronics, wholesale of information and communication equipment and information and communication services. The projected forecasted figure is not available for 2022 but it is estimated that employment will grow significantly faster than employment in other sectors at 3.2% a year compared with 0.8% for the rest of the economy.