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How the vaccine rescued the UK’s job market

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How the vaccine rescued the UK’s job market
  • Despite a monthly increase of 1.8 million cases of coronavirus in December ’21 compared to November ’21, payroll increased by 106,000
  • Since March 2021, payroll has consistently grown by at least 66,000
  • During 2020, cases of coronavirus had a direct and negative impact on payroll

Payroll experts, Staffology have investigated the statistics of the coronavirus pandemic, discovering how the vaccine saved the UK’s job market, and how various lockdowns and restrictions impacted the number of coronavirus cases and people on payroll.

The first national lockdown from March to the end of May controlled the virus regarding rates of infection, however the economic impact saw turbulence in payroll. Despite the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), or furlough as it was more commonly known, April 2020 saw the largest amount of month-on-month job losses in the entire pandemic, with 408,000 less people enrolled on payroll. May saw another 92,000 fewer people on payroll, meaning that in a two month period, half a million people had potentially lost their jobs.

As the pandemic continued, cases of coronavirus were still being managed relatively well with the change in monthly figures never exceeding +100,000, and May to July seeing a constant decline in rates. As furlough, or the coronavirus job retention scheme (CJRS), wound down, payroll numbers took another large hit of -156,000. The following month then saw a change of +115,500 coronavirus cases (likely due to the ‘eat out to help out’ scheme), and then +422,000 in October, supported by the amount of people on payroll reducing each month, which made August to October the most economically deadly months at that point in the pandemic. It was then, when cases of coronavirus peaked, payroll numbers spiralled.

The government’s second lockdown in November then began to control the virus again and saw the first positive change in payroll for three months, along with a relatively small increase in covid rates of 27,000 cases. When the lockdown was ended after just a month though, cases skyrocketed by 392,000 and payroll saw a decrease of 80,500.

2021 saw the support of the vaccine, which was being rapidly rolled out across the nation, and as a result February saw a reduction of 861,000 cases of coronavirus. As a result of less restrictions, employers were able to hire without so many limitations, and from March 2021, increases in payroll would not drop below +66,800 for the entire year. Coronavirus cases were also levelling out.

Before the vaccine, cases of coronavirus had a much more direct impact on payroll, making 2020 a difficult year for many. Proof of this is that December 2021 had 1.8 million more cases of coronavirus than November, yet 106,000 more people were registered on payroll. The same time in December 2020 saw an increase of 392,000 cases and 80,500 less people on payroll. Coronavirus has had a very direct impact on payroll, however the vaccine is the true saviour of the UK’s job market, and restored faith in employers

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New Snowflake Report Unveils Average of 90 AI-Apps Built Per Day in 2023

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Snowflake report unearths Python as the programming language of choice for AI development, while the processing of unstructured data has increased by 123 percent in the past year

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly being used to create chatbots, according to Data Cloud company Snowflake. As generative AI continues to revolutionize the industry, chatbots have grown from being approximately 18 percent of the total LLM apps available, to now encompassing 46 percent as of May 2023 — and that metric is only climbing. In addition, after surveying Streamlit’s developer community, it was found that nearly 65 percent of respondents noted that their LLM projects were for work purposes, signaling a shift in the importance of harnessing generative AI to improve workforce productivity, efficiency, and insights. 

These results are based on usage data from more than 9,000 Snowflake customers, and summarized in Snowflake’s new “Data Trends 2024” report. The report focuses on how global enterprise business and technology leaders are leveraging resources such as AI to build their data foundation and transform future business operations. The new data shows a shift from LLM applications with text-based input (2023: 82%, 2024: 54%) to chatbots with iterative text input, offering the ability to have a natural conversation.

“Conversational apps are on the rise, because that’s the way humans are programmed to interact. And now it is even easier to interact conversationally with an application,” explains Jennifer Belissent, Principal Data Strategist at Snowflake. “‘We expect to see this trend continue as it becomes easier to build and deploy conversational LLM applications, particularly knowing that the underlying data remains well governed and protected. With that peace of mind, these new interactive and highly versatile chatbots will meet both business needs and user expectations.”

Over 33,000 LLM Applications in Nine Months

The report also shows that 20,076 developers from Snowflake’s Streamlit community of developers have built over 33,143 LLM apps in the past nine months. When it comes to developing AI projects, Python is the programming language of choice due to its ease of use, active community of developers, and vast ecosystem of libraries and frameworks. In Snowpark, which enables developers to build apps quickly and cost-effectively, the use of Python grew significantly faster than that of Java and Scala (in the past year)— Python grew by 571 percent, Scala by 387 percent, and Java by 131 percent. With Python, developers can work faster, accelerating prototyping and experimentation—and therefore overall learnings as developer teams make early forays into cutting-edge AI projects.

In terms of where application development is taking place, the trend is towards programming LLM applications directly on the platform on which the data is also managed. This is indicated by a 311 percent increase in Snowflake Native Appswhich enables the development of apps directly on Snowflake’s platform –  between July 2023 and January 2024. Developing applications on a single data platform eliminates the need to export data copies to third-party technologies, helping develop and deploy applications faster, while reducing operational maintenance costs.

Data Governance in Companies is Growing in Importance

With the adoption of AI, companies are increasing analysis and processing of their unstructured data. This is enabling companies to discover untapped data sources, making a modern approach to data governance more crucial than ever to protect sensitive and private data. The report found that enterprises have increased the processing of unstructured data by 123 percent in the past year. IDC estimates that up to 90 percent of the world’s data is unstructured video, images, and documents. Clean data gives language models a head start, so unlocking this untapped 90 percent opens up a number of business benefits.

“Data governance is not about locking down data, but ultimately about unlocking the value of data,” said Belissent. “We break governance into three pillars: knowing data, securing data and using data to deliver that value. Our customers are using new features to tag and classify data so that the appropriate access and usage policies can be applied. The use of all data governance functions has increased by 70 to 100 percent. As a result, the number of queries of protected objects has increased by 142 percent. When the data is protected, it can be used securely. That delivers peace of mind.”

“Taken individually, each of these trends is a single data point that shows how organizations across the globe are dealing with different challenges. When considered together, they tell a larger story about how CIOs, CTOs, and CDOs are modernizing their organizations, tackling AI experiments, and solving data problems — all necessary steps to take advantage of the opportunities presented by advanced AI,” says Belissent. “The important thing to understand is that the era of generative AI does not require a fundamental change in data strategy. It does, however, require accelerated execution of that strategy. It requires breaking down data silos even faster and opening up access to data sources, wherever they may be in the company or across a broader data ecosystem.”

The full report “Data Trends 2024 ” can be found here.

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Report Methodology

The Snowflake Data Trends Report 2024 is generated from fully aggregated, anonymized data detailing usage of the Snowflake Data Cloud and its integrated features and tools. In this report, we examine patterns and trends in data and AI adoption across more than 9,000 global Snowflake accounts. The Snowflake Data Cloud provides insight into the state of data and AI, including which technologies are the fastest growing. Note that usage attributable to internal consumption, if any, has been removed and is not reflected in any of the metrics contained herein. The accounts and usage reflected in this report represent every major industry and include both longtime Snowflake users and others who only recently joined the Data Cloud.

About Snowflake

Snowflake enables every organization to mobilize their data with Snowflake’s Data Cloud. Customers use the Data Cloud to unite siloed data, discover and securely share data, power data applications, and execute diverse AI/ML and analytic workloads. Wherever data or users live, Snowflake delivers a single data experience that spans multiple clouds and geographies. Thousands of customers across many industries, including 691 of the 2023 Forbes Global 2000 (G2K) as of January 31, 2024, use Snowflake Data Cloud to power their businesses. Learn more at snowflake.com.

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According to setscale, More than 50% of US Small Businesses are Unaware of Federal Government Contracts, Losing $84 Billion a Year in Valuable Deals

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Setscale, a purchase order financing company, reports on small business financing, highlighting the lack of access to US government contracts

Setscale, the purchase order financing company, released today its first-ever report on US small business financing. The report surveyed US small business owners to better understand some of the financial barriers to small business ownership, including their awareness of federal government contracts for small businesses.

69% of US small businesses struggle with cash flow, preventing them from meeting the demand of government contracts.

More than half (52%) of all surveyed small business owners revealed that they aren’t aware of the specific contracts the US federal government awards to small businesses each year, missing out on approximately $84 billion* per year.

Government contracts are well-valued and often serve as a gateway to a steady source of income and small business growth. More than 70% (71%) of surveyed US small businesses say that they’re aware of lucrative and reliable government contracts, but more than half (52%) say they don’t know what specific contracts are available to them. And over a quarter of US small businesses (29%) are completely unaware that the federal government awards contracts to small businesses.

This report highlights that the federal government is investing in small businesses in record-high amounts, but business owners are still struggling to fill open government purchase orders. Almost 70% (69%) of US small businesses struggle with cash flow and working capital, preventing them from meeting the demand of a government contract. Many businesses pursue lines of credit from a bank or financial institution to fulfill purchase orders, but these are costly and hard to obtain. Alternative finance like purchase order financing can help these businesses secure and fulfill valuable government contracts.

Moreover, US small business owners say that a lack of cash flow and working capital prevents them from securing government contracts. At 22%, a lack of cash flow or capital is the second most popular reason that prevents US small business owners from securing a government contract. The most popular reason they aren’t securing government contracts is due to a lack of time and resources (25%).

“Our small business financing report sheds light on an issue that more than half of surveyed business owners know all too well – that even though the US federal government is awarding a record number of contracts to our small businesses, they’re still struggling financially to fulfill open purchase orders, potentially losing out on more than $80 billion each fiscal year,” comments Daniel Fine, Founder and CEO of Setscale.

“Government contracts are fierce competition for US small business owners for a reason. They’re reliable, well-valued, and often lead to steady sources of income. However, due to a lack of knowledge of the specific government contract awarding process, business owners are unsure if they can fulfill the government’s open purchase orders without pursuing a line of credit from a bank or financial institution,” elaborates Fine. “With interest rates at an all-time high, it’s an incredibly bad time to be a borrower. PO financing allows a small business to quickly bid on a contract, finance the full transaction, and scale operations to meet the size of the order.”

*In Fiscal Year 2022, the US federal government awarded $162.9B in federal contracting opportunities to small businesses. 52% of surveyed US small business owners reported that they aren’t aware of the specific contracts the US federal government awards to small businesses * $162.9B = $84B in lost opportunities.

Survey Methodology
Setscale designed and executed research for this report in collaboration with Censuswide. 251 US small business owners in companies with less than 50 employees (aged 18+) were surveyed online in October 2023. Censuswide abides by and employs members of the Market Research Society which is based on the ESOMAR principles.

About Setscale
Setscale is a fintech startup solving the trade financing dilemma for small businesses. Small businesses frequently get purchase orders, but don’t have the money to fill them. Through its PO financing technology, Setscale finances the cost of those goods, allowing small businesses to focus on product and sales, enabling them to scale. Setscale is an ideal partner for SMBs, coming in where traditional financial institutions won’t, enabling SMB’s to finance their growth. Setscale funds supply. You meet demand.

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Data Research Reveals The Most Tech-Forward Regions in the UK

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uk top tech forward regions

Many businesses are currently concerned with the slower rate of economic growth, traditionally slow levels of growth come with recession rumours and sometimes a starker reality.

Despite lower levels of growth in some industries, across the UK the tech industry is outpacing other sectors when it comes to growth. In fact, it’s expanding over two and a half times faster than the rest of the UK’s economy, with newly registered tech companies appearing at an average rate of 22%.  By inspecting this highly competitive industry, it’s clear to see that certain regions seem to be attracting higher levels of tech professionals and providing optimal environments for tech firms to thrive.

So just what is it that contributes to a flourishing tech company? Microsoft Partners, Pragmatiq have carried out a data study to better understand the contributing factors that ensure tech firms thrive.

The League of Tech-Savvy Regions

Using data collected and measured against varying criteria, each region has been ranked via a points system to distinguish innovation hub locations from regions with less focus on tech. To generate this data set the following criteria has been considered; the number of tech jobs advertised in an area, the average Wi-Fi speed, the average tech salary, the number of universities offering computer science degrees and of course the number of tech companies based in the region. Full details of the methodology used can be found at the end of this article.

The Winners

  1. Greater London
  2. South East England
  3. East of England
  4. East Midlands
  5. South West England
  6. Yorkshire and the Humber
  7. Scotland
  8. North West England
  9. Northern Ireland
  10. West Midlands
  11. North East England
  12. Wales

Greater London: An Obvious Winner

As the capital city of the UK with a reputation for being one of the world’s leading financial powerhouse cities, it’s no surprise that Greater London ranked at the top of the leaderboard. Scoring points across every single leaderboard category, above average for; salaries, tech jobs, wifi speed, high-performing universities and tech companies.

Unsurprisingly London is a popular location with many FTSE100 companies and disruptive start-ups alike. With capital’s workforce made up of almost 2.2 million millennials and Gen Zers who are considered digital natives, these combined factors are likely to drive up results.

When it comes to tech roles, London does offer the best salaries going when it comes to tech roles. The average tech salary sits at £55,000, around £17,500 more than a tech role based in South East England. Of course, this also considers London weighting, but it’s still over £16,000 more than the second-highest placing region for tech salaries (Northern Ireland).

The Second Most Tech-Savvy Region

South East England came out as another top scorer, achieving four out of a possible five points and putting two points between themselves and the third-place spot. As an area that offers exceptional job prospects within the tech industry, above average salaries, excellent universities offering Computer Science degrees and also around 4,812 tech companies, the South East is a clear contender for the most tech-savvy region.

The region is also an admirable area for study, especially where undergraduates are concerned. The region houses six high-scoring universities that offer a Computer Science degree, one of which (University of Oxford) sits within the Russell Group. Russell Group universities are notorious for their social, economic and cultural impacts, something the city of Oxford has benefited from in recent years. As well as presenting a TCU rating of 99%, the university also encouraged 21 spinout tech firms alone in the year 2017.

The South East region lost a point on WiFi speed by just 0.4Mbps where 72Mbps came out as the average. Less emphasis on budget for improved telecommunications is likely where the region has fallen short. According to one study on non-domestic premises, only 26.81%of businesses had full fibre installed, meaning many missing out on faster connection speeds without it.

Otherwise, it’s deemed a technology hub with above-average access to digital roles, good salaries, and number of registered tech companies.  South East England is also in close proximity to London, making it ideal for businesses to operate out of the area without the extortionate price tag for rent or expenditure on salaries.

As part of the study, many expected the North East to come a close second to Greater London, especially as it has links to Manchester. In recent years, there has been greater interest in operating from Manchester, with companies such as the BBC, Google and Microsoft setting up bases there. This clearly shows that, whilst the interest and development are there, it’s not quite reaching top tech status as a region.

The Runners Up (in Joint Third Place)

  • East of England
  • East Midlands
  • South West England
  • Yorkshire and the Humber
  • Scotland

Five regions were positioned in joint third place with 2 points each. With the exception of Scotland, they all ranked below average for tech salaries where the overall average pay appears at £37,342. Areas, like Greater London, were naturally going to outrank other regions here where the London weighting is considered. It’s worth noting that Glasgow is one of the most popular locations for millennials and Gen Z to live, which positively reflects in the average salary, along with the number of Universities offering quality Computer Science degrees.

Despite the promising figures around educational opportunities and a young force workforce, there are fewer job prospects the further north you head, which attributes to their lower score.

The South West region also finished in joint third place, despite average tech salaries placing at around £35,500, this is still a significant £1,842 shy of the UK average.  In 2022, there was a 57% reported increase in the number of students studying tech and engineering courses within the region, which could attribute to a demand for talent.

One of the key elements that this data study has uncovered is that with the exception of Northern Ireland, it appears that the further away from Greater London you travel, sadly the lower the average salary becomes.

Regions Trailing Behind

  • North West England
  • Northern Ireland
  • West Midlands
  • North East England
  • Wales

Landing in last place, Wales was let down by low average WiFi speeds and a lack of tech companies based in the area. The average  WiFi speeds in Wales has a rate of 58.3Mbps with a humble 882 tech companies currently calling Wales home, compared to the staggering 23,901 London-based tech corporations. Despite scoring in last place, Wales does boast three universities that offer good Computer Science degrees, with Cardiff University ensuring a satisfaction rate of 78.8%. It seems many want to attend university in Wales and then pursue job prospects further afield.

In second to last place, the North East didn’t score any points and was let down by low average salaries for the tech sector.  Offering around £32,500 for a tech-based role, £5,000 less than the average in the South East of England. Although let down by salaries, the North East is home to three high-scoring universities that offer sought-after Computer Science degrees. The region also boasts one of the highest proportions of STEM students in the country, making it an attractive hub for potential tech investment. With an influx of tech companies operating from the North East and North West, this is likely to drive up the region’s score in years to come.


A final word on tech regions

Regions, such as Greater London and South East England, are trailblazing when it comes to their tech forward approach and prospects within the industry. With a lot of businesses trickling down into South East England from Greater London, there has clearly been a much greater emphasis to ensure the region’s success. For example, in order to compete with Greater London, South East England has been able to ensure salary and access to digital tech roles are above average, making it an attractive place to work or set up a business.

This study highlights that every region has room to expand its emphasis on tech even further. With only one region (Greater London) scoring on all five criteria, and two regions (North East England and Wales) scoring none, there are clearly steps local councils and organisations can take to improve an area’s tech offering. Over time, it’s expected that places, such as the North East of England and Scotland will creep up the list further, scoring more points for advertised jobs and the number of tech companies.

Data Methodology

Five categories were defined in total. Through data collection, an average score was generated. Any region exceeding the average received one point with a total of five points to score. Below are the averages used to measure the data:

  • – 3,873

To determine the average score of Universities, a few additional steps were taken. Firstly, the most popular degree within the tech industry needed to be determined. By a significant margin, Computer Science came out on top.

After this point, a full list of universities offering a Computer Science degree was sourced from The Complete University Guide. They produced a score out of 100 for each university that measured things like overall student satisfaction and graduate prospects. Each university was then categorised into regions and an average TCU score was determined at 73.2%.

Any universities with a score above 73.2% were then separated and categorised into regions. Another average calculation was completed to reveal that any region with four or more universities scoring above 73.2% would gain a point. For example, Scotland has eight universities that score higher than average, therefore the region received one point.

How many regions scored above average?

  • Number of advertised digital tech role – 4 out 12 regions
  • Average WiFi speed – 6 out of 12 regions
  • Average total salary – 4 out of 12 regions
  • Universities offering a Computer Science degree with above average score – 6 out of 12 regions
  • Number of tech companies – 2 out of 12 regions

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