America looks to UK for IT talent

US firms are increasingly looking to the UK to meet their growing needs for IT consultants in the digital sector.

The top states hiring UK IT talent are California, home to Silicon Valley, New York and Texas. While top freelancer locations in the UK are London, Leeds, Glasgow and Manchester, according to research from online business marketplace, Peopleperhour.com.

The new figures reveal that the IT consultants are gaining work in IT/Web/Programming (mainly web design, application development and web programming), Design (mainly graphic design and logo design) and Writing/Translation mainly (Copy editing/writing and web content).

According to PeoplePerHour.com founder and CEO Xenios Thrasyvoulou these latest figures show that the UK has one of the most talented and skilled IT sectors in the world. He said: "Our figures show clearly that the UK is producing highly skilled IT consultants. The huge growth in hiring UK IT consultants from the US when both countries have high unemployment, shows that the UK staff are not just taking surplus jobs but competing with their US counterparts in a highly competitive marketplace.

"What's more, UK IT consultants are competing most successfully in California, the home of Silicon Valley, which attracts IT specialists from around the world. This shows that it isn't just US IT specialists that the UK consultants are successfully competing against but IT specialists from other countries too."