changing rapidly and leading to the gap in demand and supply of talent. Things are little better in Australia where a report


compiled by Deloitte for the tech industry's trade body ACS (Australian Computer Society), found the “significant” technology skills shortage threatened to constrain economic growth in the years ahead. It was estimated that 60,000 more IT workers would be needed per year over the next five years in a country where, in 2019, only 7,000 students graduated with an IT degree.


ATTRACTING MOBILE TECH TALENT Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has branded the workforce skills shortage as the “single biggest challenge facing the Australian economy” in recovering from the Covid-19 pandemic, while employer surveys show it has become their top concern. China, too, is looking to fill its growing skills gap


with immigrant workers, prompting Taiwan to order recruitment companies to remove all listings for jobs in the mainland this spring. “Due to geopolitical tension between the US and


China, China's semiconductor development has suffered some setbacks and as a result China has become more aggressive in poaching and targeting top Taiwanese chip talent to help build a self-sufficient supply chain,” said the Ministry of Labour in Taipei. Even Singapore's bid to establish itself as a regional


tech hub is stumbling amid a boom in jobs and a shortage of suitable candidates, which can only be filled by expats coming to the city-state, according to Ravi Menon, managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore. Almost two-thirds of the estimated 25,000 tech workforce in Singapore's financial sector already hail from abroad. Meanwhile, in the US, the election of Joe Biden has


brought major changes to the immigration policies that underwent much tightening during the Donald Trump presidency. Most importantly for the tech industry, the H1B skilled worker visa has been fully restored, but Google, Apple, Amazon, Intel and much of the rest of Silicon Valley are still not happy. The tech giants are opposing legal moves to bar


spouses of skilled immigrants on the visas from gaining lawful employment in the US – a move that would impact at least 90,000 spouses, almost all of them women. “The stakes are high, and not just for tech companies


that would struggle to hire skilled workers if their spouses were barred from working,” says Steve S. Rao, a board member of the New American Economy, which campaigns for immigration reform. “Banning these highly educated workers from using their talents would hurt our entire economy, lowering GDP by around $7.5 billion per year, and robbing the federal government of $1.9 billion in tax revenues.”


CREATING THE RIGHT CONDITIONS In mainland Europe, the likes of France, Germany and even the four Nordic nations – long regarded as magnets for tech talent – are finding it increasingly difficult to find they skills they need. But there are exceptions, according to the IMF: “Countries like Israel and Poland have become success stories when it comes to filling tech jobs, in part because both had a high domestic tech skill base to begin with. “Israel has more start-ups per capita than any other


“ Companies are paying more, they’re hiring more, but there is still a shortage of high-skilled tech workers. Technology is the thread that runs across every aspect of business.” ALAN GUARINO, VICE-CHAIRMAN, KORN FERRY


country. Poland also boasts a strong start-up community along with a highly educated workforce with lots of English speakers. These made Warsaw an attractive location for Google to launch a new campus in 2016.” In the UK, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rishi Sunak


announced the launch in his spring Budget of a fast-track tech visa in a bid to make Britain the “best place in the world for high-growth, innovative companies”. More details are due in July but Mr Sunak described it as a “new, unsponsored, points-based visa to attract the best and most promising international talent in science, research and tech”, with improved visa processes for scale-ups and entrepreneurs, and “radically simplified bureaucracy” for high-skilled visa applications. The necessity of attracting foreign talent was


emphasised in a report from the Learning & Work Institute think-tank, which warned that the UK was heading for a digital skills shortage “disaster” after data revealed the number of teenagers taking IT subjects at GCSE level has dropped by 40%. Yet the opportunities for young techies are vast.


According to the annual report from Tech Nation – a government-backed agency for tech entrepreneurs, which administers the Global Talent Visa – the UK's digital tech sector grew almost six times faster than the rest of the economy between 2019-20. And that growth has accelerated over the past year as the pandemic obliged organisations to make large-scale switches to digital: recent research by Tech Nation and the government’s Digital Economy Council found that 10% of all current vacancies were for tech jobs. In the 12 months to April, technology recruiter


Harvey Nash says it saw a 112% increase in new tech roles, with solutions architects, business analysts and Java developers in particularly high demand. Bev White, CEO of Harvey Nash, says that research


data show IT leaders are now putting their plans into action and that, given the shortage of technology talent within the country, recruiters are having to search further afield to fill vacancies. “Due to a lack of homegrown skills, UK tech continues to recruit overseas talent, which is largely attracted to the South and London,” she said. “In fact, almost half (46%) of tech professionals in the South and London reported that they had moved to the UK from abroad.” Among the nation's 76,500 fintech workers, 42%


come from abroad, according to a recent report by Innovate Finance. To Nigel Bridges, founding CEO at London-based analytics firm Beacon, this demonstrates the reliance that the UK’s tech sector has on foreign talent and how important these workers are to its


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