Microsoft predicts 80,000 IT jobs in UK

There will be around 80,000 new IT jobs created in the next four years as thousands of new companies set up shop in the UK, according to research by Microsoft.

A report by the computer giant revealed that more than £50 billion will be spent in the IT industry during this year and this figure will rise by almost two per cent every year until 2013.

It predicted that the majority of new IT businesses will be small to medium sized, with 2,500 companies providing work for 78,200 people.

Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer said the whole industry has had to reform in the face of the first real recession it has gone through.

The executive said: "Consumer spending was impacted, we had to decide how to cut. We suffered the first revenue declines in our company history. They were a few per cent."

He added that the competition between Google and his company is still ongoing, with both firms trying to make gains in areas where the other is dominant.

Siobhan Chapman, deputy editor at ComputerworldUK.com, recently said that IT jobs are on the up thanks to large investment from the government as it tries to establish the UK as a leader in the field.