Demand for telecoms and IT workers is set to increase five times faster than the national average over the next ten years, the government’s sector skills council predicts.

That means opportunities in ICT will grow by 2.19% a year – compared with 0.45% for the general workforce, indicating IT will indeed lead the recovery, as ministers have claimed. But put another way, the figures from e-skills translate into the technology industry needing half a million workers over the next five years just to meet its requirements.

“This year alone,” the group said in its latest report, Technology Insights 2011, “the IT and telecoms industry will require 110,000 new entrants to keep with demand.” Almost half the IT workers needed this year will be sourced from non-tech industries, while 17 % will come directly from education, such as school leavers and university graduates.

Women will continue to be outnumbered, and currently represent less than fifth of the tech industry’s total workforce of 1.5million, which itself suggests that one in 20 UK workers is in IT. That worker is increasingly likely to be male and old, as the pool of under-30s in the sector has narrowed from 33% to 19%, at the same time that the pool of techies aged 50 or over has doubled.

Contractors were not referred to in the report but, in a nod to their strong presence, e-skills said that only about 40% of the UK’s IT headcount is directly employed by technology firms.