Proposals to exempt Information and Communications Technology and e-Business jobs from the requirement for work permits have been backed by the boss of the island’s Manx ICT Association.
Kurt Roosen told Business News the island has to encourage both local and new digital businesses to grow.
He says the island needs to maintain national income, prosperity and jobs.
‘Therefore, carefully considered steps which illustrate our intent are very welome -this is one such step.’
The association, known as MICTA, is the IT sector representative body for the island.
Minister for Economic Development Laurence Skelly MHK said: ‘We are bringing forward an exemption order as we have received a significant amount of evidence from the island’s private sector that the great growth we are achieving in e-Business means that employers are struggling to recruit suitably skilled workers locally to fill the new job vacancies being created.
‘The high number of job vacancies for staff with ICT and e-Business skills, along with the number of work permit applications that are being received, demonstrates that suitable workers are not available in the local employment market’.
The DED says that to ensure that the jobs affected are genuinely highly skilled, the exemptions will apply only to employment lasting at least 12 months and to individuals earning a salary of more than £25,000 per annum.
Approval will be sought from Tynwald for the exemption measures.
Mr Roosen told Business News: ‘The Manx ICT Association (MICTA) has worked very closely with DED on the issue of the global digital skills gap and how this applies to the Isle of Man.
‘The exemption proposal is just one in a range of initiatives to support the continued growth of what is fast becoming the biggest part of the Isle of Man economy.
‘Our Digital (or e-business) Sector is not purely about eGaming, but is becoming increasingly diverse in its own right and already amounts to 25 per cent of our economy, with high average salaries and therefore very significant contributions to tax revenue and also local spending. The most pertinent part of this sector, is its ability to continue to grow and become more and more diverse, as IT pervades every part of our lives and is very global in nature.
‘In short, it is vital to our collective future prosperity.’
Mr Roosen says that every local company would always prefer to employ locally as it is better for society, and the lack of relocation removes those additional expenses as well as eliminating the risk of a person (or their family) coming over, not settling and then returning home.
He added: ‘However, the reality is that companies cannot find enough local people with appropriate skills, because right now they are simply not there.
‘We have a constant pool of 100 or so unfilled vacancies and for many there are not a single local applicant.
‘We also have to bear in mind that we have a minimal number of people unemployed, so if all jobs were filled by local people then we would just be moving round the deckchairs on the deck’.
Mr Roosen points out that every new person that comes here is new tax revenue, a new person spending their money in the economy (buying houses, using restaurants etc) so growth in economically active people is good for everyone as long as we do not leave local people behind, but there is significant work going on in this area to make sure this is not the case and the low unemployment rate could be seen as a barometer of this.
‘MICTA, and other parties, are working very hard to support educational development with things such as the Code Club, Careers Ready, the new ICT facility at the Nunnery and increased awareness in schools of the need for IT skills through initiatives such as the Code Bus.
‘The Code Club alone now has more than 400 members. We even hope to develop IT apprenticeships in the not too distant future that are open to both the young and the older participant that wants to retrain.
‘But all of these initiatives will take a number of years to filter through and, in such a dynamic industry, it could be argued that we don’t have the luxury of time.
‘However, the basis of investments in education and retraining are there for the future. We are operating within a worldwide shortage of IT skills and hence finding local workers on the Isle of Man with the prerequisite skills is difficult and encouraging people from elsewhere is actually even more difficult as, with a range of options you will often choose the one with the least resistance.
‘Moving to a new country is a big step, and the complication of waiting for a work permit application that they would not have to do anywhere in Europe puts us at a disadvantage which is the specific circumstance that the exemption is designed to deal with, but only for the highly paid, highly skilled people that cannot yet be found here.
‘This does not remove the need for a visa from outside the EU and is not about cheap imports of people - it is about meeting latent demand.
‘We currently have local companies that are creating new operations elsewhere (and not in cheaper places but instead in places like the UK and Ireland) because they cannot find people locally.
‘If we do not address that trend, then future opportunities for local people will diminish as growth and income happens outside the Isle of Man so we lose the opportunity to participate.
‘We have to encourage both local and new digital businesses to grow to maintain our national income and prosperity, and direct and indirect jobs.
‘Therefore, carefully considered steps which illustrate our intent are very welcome - this is one such step’