Mapping Skills Supply and Demand
Skills Supply and Demand - Summary
Key Findings
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There is an undersupply of NVQ2 and NVQ4 and an oversupply of NVQ3 and NVQ1, within the West Midlands, creating an imbalance of demand and supply by skill level in the workforce.
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There is a national undersupply of people proficient in digital skills at all levels, with significant growth in the higher end skills and a lack of supply chain through all stages to fulfil these roles.
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The public sector, teaching, care and health remain resilient sectors in terms of job availability and advertisements and demand may outstrip supply with the impact of the pandemic and the ageing population demands.
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The supply and demand mismatches ultimately increase the workload of those around them, which can create a fall in productivity.
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In Further Education, shortfalls still exist in marketing, public services, business management, and administration. GCSE resubmissions and employability skills still dominate submission. While these may not align to job roles in specific sectors, they do support general preparation of young people for the workplace.
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Wage trends data from PAYE records indicate that wages in IT have grown significantly, arts and entertainment have seen strong wage growth (but correspondingly higher risk), while manufacturing and public sector-dominated professions have seen slow rises and are threatened by inflation. These trends reflect continuing difficulty meeting demand in IT-intensive roles, as well as being able to attract public sector staff in education and health.
Proficiency of workforce
Skills development within the workforce appears to be less of a constraint in the West Midlands, perhaps due to a smaller share of the knowledge economy jobs which involve iterative development of technical skills, such as software development.
Proportion of staff not fully proficient |
proportion of establishments with any under utilised staff |
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| Coventry and Warwickshire | 4.33 | 35.00 |
| greater Birmingham and Solihull | 3.53 | 35.00 |
| Black Country | 2.96 | 32.00 |
| England | 4.58 | 34.00 |
Table 6: Comparison between England and West Midlands LEP areas of proportion of staff deemed ‘fully proficient’ by employers. Source: Employer Skills Survey 2019. Employer Skills Survey, 2019 (published 2020), 2019 LEP boundaries
Hard-to-fill and skills shortage vacancies
As with England in general, skills shortages are the most common reason for employers to be unable to fill a vacancy. The only difference beyond the margin of error is a lower proportion of skills shortage vacancies observed in Coventry and Warwickshire.
Proportion of all vacancies that are hard to fill due to skills shortage or other reasons 2019
Skills shortage - 25
Other - 12
Skills shortage - 25
Other - 11
Skills shortage - 21
Other - 11
Skills shortage - 25
Other - 11
Figure 21: Comparison of hard-to-fill (due to skills shortages) vacancies by LEP area, compared to England. Source: Employer Skills Survey.