DCMS Sector Skills Shortages and Skills Gaps: 2024, UK
Official Statistics in development on skills shortages and skills gaps in the DCMS sectors and sub-sectors for 2024, based on the Department for Education's Employer Skills Survey.
Documents
Details
Headline Findings
Skills-shortage vacancies - hard to fill vacancies due to skill-shortages
- The incidence of skill-shortage vacancies in DCMS sectors is 5.0%, which is the proportion of businesses that have at least one vacancy that is hard to fill due to applicants not having the right skills, qualifications or experience. This is lower than in UK sectors overall (All Sectors) (6.3%). Creative industries (3.2%) and the cultural sector (3.5%) have a lower proportion of skill-shortage vacancies than UK sectors overall, while the remaining sectors are not significantly different.
- 22% of vacancies in DCMS sectors are attributed to skill-shortages, lower than 26.7% for UK sectors overall. Civil society (20.5%) and tourism industries (21.6%) have lower skill-shortage vacancy density than UK sectors overall, while sport (39.9%) and the cultural sector (32.9%) have a percentage of total vacancies that are proving hard to fill due to applicants not having the right skills, qualifications and/or experience.
Skills gaps - within the workforce
- The skills gaps incidence of DCMS sector business is 11.7%, which is the proportion of businesses that have at least one staff member judged to be not fully proficient in their role. This is in line with UK sectors overall (11.7%). Creative industries (7.7%) and the cultural sector (6.9%) have the lowest skills gap in the workforce, whereas gambling has a much higher incidence of skills gaps in the workforce (45.3%).
- 4% of the DCMS sector workforce have skills gaps, in line with UK sectors overall (4%). This is lower than in 2022, with DCMS sectors and UK sectors overall reporting 6.4% and 5.7% respectively. Compared to UK sectors overall, skills gaps are higher in tourism industries (5.2%) and lower in civil society (2.9%).
About this release
This release is an Official Statistic in Development used to provide an estimate of skills shortages and skills gaps in the DCMS sectors. This is the third release of these statistics and covers the year 2024, based on the most recent data available from the Department for Education’s Employer Skills Survey. The statistics cover the entire UK (England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland), and are comparable to 2022 estimates published for 2022.
In 2019, published figures excluded Scotland which was covered separately in its own national ESS in 2020 and national EPS in 2019 and 2021. To support comparability, the 2022 publication included figures both including and excluding Scotland. From data covering 2024 and onwards, all published figures will include Scotland.
Estimates are provided for DCMS sectors, sub-sectors and the Audio Visual sector. Breakdowns are provided by region but disclosure control is applied where sample sizes were too low. The DCMS sectors are:
- Civil Society
- Creative Industries
- Cultural Sector
- Gambling
- Sport
- Tourism
In 2022, a pattern of alternating between large and small sample sizes was adopted for the Employer Skills Survey (ESS), Department for Education. As a result, 2024 has a smaller sample size with a focus on updating core metrics. Therefore, disclosure control is applied for sector and sub-sector regional breakdowns. For the Employer Skills Survey 2024, the Department for Education produced estimates for the creative industries using a tailored weighting approach (IS-8) for priority sectors as part of the Industrial Strategy. The methodology does not provide regional or subsector breakdowns, and cannot be aggregated with other DCMS sectors in this publication due to a risk of overcounting. These figures have therefore not been included in this publication. Please note that these figures are not comparable with those presented in this publication or with previous years. DfE’s IS-8 estimates are available at Employer Skills Survey 2024. Further information is available in the accompanying technical document along with details of methods and data limitations.
Release date
30 April 2026
Official statistics in development
These statistics are labelled as official statistics in development. Official statistics in development are official statistics that are undergoing development and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics. These DCMS sector skills shortages and gaps estimates give an indication of the nature and extent of skills issues in DCMS sectors. They can be used alongside our other economic estimates and to give a deeper understanding of the performance of DCMS sectors to the UK economy. They are being published as official statistics in development because:
- there is a limited time series currently available for the UK as a whole. Only the previous statistics published for 2022 are directly comparable.
- we will be seeking user feedback on the usefulness of the statistics, the suitability of the measures used and how clearly the statistics are communicated, including explanations about quality.
We will look to publish a comparable UK backseries of the DCMS Sector Skills Shortages and Skills Gaps data in the future. Following this development work, and some user engagement we will make an assessment about whether the statistics still remain in development or if the label can be removed.
Feedback
DCMS aims to continuously improve the quality of estimates and better meet user needs. DCMS welcomes feedback on this release. Feedback should be sent to DCMS via email at evidence@dcms.gov.uk.
Office for Statistics Regulation
Our statistical practice is regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.
You are welcome to contact us directly with any comments about how we meet these standards by emailing evidence@dcms.gov.uk. Alternatively, you can contact OSR by emailing regulation@statistics.gov.uk or via the OSR website.
Pre-release access
The accompanying pre-release access document lists ministers and officials who have received privileged early access to this release. In line with best practice, the list has been kept to a minimum and those given access for briefing purposes had a maximum of 24 hours.
Contact
Responsible statistician: Rebecca Jones
For any queries or feedback, please contact evidence@dcms.gov.uk.