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Top 10 most in-demand job skills in the UK

Shot of two programmers working together on a computer code at night
The top seven skills most desired by UK employers are coding languages. Photo: Getty

The most in-demand job skills in the UK are coding skills and programming languages.

According to new research by talent and recruitment consultancy SHL, the top seven skills most desired by UK employers are coding languages, with SQL topping the list.

Spoken language skills are also in demand as French language skills took the eighth place in the ranking, and German came in at number 10.

Skills in the field of search engine optimisation were at number nine on the list, proving popular with employers looking to hire in the field of marketing.

SQL — a programming language used for database management — appeared in 18,380 job advertisements in the analysis of 1,009,059 active job advertisements on LinkedIn in April 2020.

Top 10 most in-demand job skills in the UK
The top 10 most in-demand job skills in the UK. Photo: SHL

Knowledge of programming language JavaScript was the second most in-demand, appearing in 14,404 job ads, followed by Python, with 13,334, C (11,706), and C# (9,986).

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Coding skills were also the highest paying job skills in the UK, with PL/SQL — which stands for Procedural Language extensions to SQL — rewarded by the highest average salary, standing at £70,797 ($92,973).

Jobs that demand knowledge of the popular cloud-based design program Figma also offer a high average salary of £59,439.

Coding skills are also in high demand in the US, with SQL also the most sought after by employers.

READ MORE: Post-COVID-19: 50% of employees are looking to move jobs

Spanish, spoken by around 43 million people in the US, ranks as the most in-demand spoken language for jobs in the States, coming in at number four on the list of the most in-demand job skills.

The highest-paying programming language in the US is Golang — officially known as Go — with US jobs that require this skill paying an average of $151,069 (£115,035). Go is used by tech companies such as Google (GOOG) and Twitter (TWTR) for large-scale network programming, and it is less likely to appear on a CV than other, more common programming languages. Only 8.2% of developers worldwide use it, according to the latest survey by Stack Overflow.

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