Research detailing skills needs and job vacancies across the UK
cyber security sector.
Cyber security skills in the UK
labour market 2025
Visual summary of key findings
from the cyber security labour market survey and sectoral
analysis 2025
Technical report: cyber security
skills in the UK labour market 2025
Details
This research into the UK cyber security labour market explores
the nature and extent of cyber security skills gaps (people
lacking appropriate skills) and skills shortages (a lack of
people available to work in cyber security job roles). The
research uses:
- Representative surveys of cyber sector businesses and the
wider population of UK organisations (businesses, charities and
public sector organisations).
- Qualitative research with recruitment agents, cyber firms and
medium/large organisations in various sectors.
- A secondary analysis of cyber security job postings on the
Lightcast labour market database, as well as reviewing the supply
of cyber security talent through sources such as the Higher
Education Statistics Authority (HESA) and
Jisc.
This 2025 report, covering the 2024 calendar year, finds:
- Approximately 143,000 individuals were employed in cyber
security roles across the UK economy, representing a 5% increase
from the previous year.
- The cyber security workforce gap stabilised at around 3,800
professionals, maintaining a similar size to the previous year
(3,500 professionals), and substantially down from 11,100 in the
2023 report.
- Around half of UK businesses (49%) reported a basic technical
cyber security skills gap, while 30% reported gaps in more
advanced technical areas. Just over a quarter of cyber security
businesses (28%) reported a lack of technical skills among their
existing employees.
- Women made up just 17% of the cyber security workforce,
falling to 12% in senior positions (6+ years of experience),
compared 48% female representation in the wider UK workforce.
- Just over half of cyber security businesses (53%) reported
using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in their day-to-day
operations, and 65% expected demand for AI skills to grow over
the following 12 months. However, only 42% had provided any AI
training to their staff.
- There were 32,370 core cyber job postings across the UK,
representing a 33% decrease from the previous year.
This is the seventh iteration of the research, which has been
carried out on an approximately annual basis. You can see the
previous versions of this report below:
This research is part of the government's wider work to improve
cyber security skills, develop the UK cyber ecosystem and
increase cyber resilience across the UK economy.
