16 January 2023 
Richard Hewitt, Director of Higher Education
Last week, the Prime Minister caused a stir with his desire to see some form of maths tuition until the age of 18. How useful this would be has been the subject of a lot of discussion in the media and educational circles. What about in the graduate job market?
Looking at Lightcast skills data, there’s been a steady increase in demand for computational and analytical skills since May 2020 - a time when data went mainstream, becoming a national talking point. This group of skills includes statistical modelling, data visualisation, data analysis and business intelligence.
Demand for Analysis skills
UK online job postings requiring a Bachelor’s degree 2018-2022
Lightcast Job Postings Analytics, 2023
Demand for these ‘Analysis’ skills is coming from a range of Career Areas including Finance, IT, Planning and Analysis, Business Management and Operations, Engineering, and Sales. Looking at graduate Planning and Analysis roles in more depth, we can see that skills like data analysis, agile methodology, marketing, auditing, economics, and project management are in high demand. Alongside those, significant software skills asked for by employers included Python, SAP Applications, Tableau, SAS, SQL, APIs, Jira, AWS, Visual Basic, and Visio.
The demand for soft skills (“common skills” in Lightcast parlance when included with transferable skills) within the same sample is a healthy reminder that mathematical prowess alone will not open the doors to graduate employment, but also that many transferable skills need a strong foundation in numeracy.
Demand for Common Skills in Planning & Analysis Roles
UK online job postings requiring a Bachelor’s degree in 2022
Lightcast Job Postings Analytics, 2023
Are you taking labour market and skills data insights into account when you're reviewing courses, planning your portfolio or horizon scanning? If you don't yet, then you need Lightcast's Analyst platform to provide you all the data you need in a way that's easy to access and share.
For immediate access, book a meeting with Lightcast's Director of Higher Education, Richard Hewitt, directly here.
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