The UK's Digital Economy is one of the most productive sectors in the economy, yet it is not drawing on all available talent.  

Women and other groups, including older and disabled workers, those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, and workers from Black ethnic backgrounds, remain significantly under-represented, leaving skills, ideas, and productivity untapped. 

Alma Economics was commissioned by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) to model the economic cost of barriers to participation in the Digital Economy. We estimate the output and GDP gains that would result from better matching of workers to roles across multiple demographic groups in the hypothetical scenario that barriers are reduced to zero.  

The findings indicate substantial untapped potential. Key findings include:

• Removing barriers for women could increase Digital Economy output by £16 billion per annum, with women in the sector seeing individual earnings gains of approximately £7,000 per year on average. 
• Better matching of women to roles could add £4 billion to GDP each year across the economy as a whole.
• Sector-level gains were also modelled for other under-represented groups: 
  workers aged 50–69 (£15 billion per annum), people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds (£5 billion per annum), those with disabilities (£3 billion per annum), and workers from Black ethnic backgrounds (£1 billion per annum). 

The analysis demonstrates that addressing under-representation in the Digital Economy is both an equity imperative and an economic one, with substantial gains available to workers and the wider economy.

Read the full report here.