Shortage list advice keeps data analysts and drops sales hires

Data analysts, database administrators and telecoms network installers should keep a route into the UK’s sponsored work visa system for at least 18 months, the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) said on 23 July. Sales accounts and business development managers, business sales executives and marketing associate professionals should not. If the home secretary accepts the advice, the sales and marketing occupations, which drew far more visas than the three digital ones, will have no place on the list.

The recommendations close the second stage of the committee’s review of the Temporary Shortage List (TSL), the list that decides which mid-skilled jobs can still be filled through the Skilled Worker visa. Since the government’s Immigration White Paper of May 2025, only occupations at degree level, Regulated Qualifications Framework (RQF) level 6, have access to that route. Jobs at RQF levels 3 to 5 need a place on the TSL to keep it, backed by a ‘Jobs Plan’ from the responsible government department showing how the sector will train and use more UK workers.

For people leaders and hiring managers at smaller tech businesses, the question is practical: which roles can still be filled from overseas, for how long, and what should replace that pipeline where the door is closing?

Three tech roles make the list

The committee reviewed 82 occupations it had judged potentially crucial to the government’s Industrial Strategy or critical infrastructure. Government departments submitted Jobs Plans for 46 of them. The MAC recommends 28 for 18-month access and none for the full three years, saying no plan was strong enough. Eighteen occupations with Jobs Plans are not recommended, including seven judged not to be in shortage, seven with particularly weak plans and two judged inappropriate for the route.

Three occupations sit under the Digital and Technology sector, and all three are recommended for 18 months. Database administrators and web content technicians averaged 102 visas a year over the past three years, in an occupation of 46,000 employees. Data analysts averaged 175 visas a year among 89,000 employees. Telecoms and related network installers and repairers averaged 202 visas, among 29,000 employees. The committee calls the case for all three “moderate”: shortage indicators “narrowly met our threshold”, while the actions in the sector’s plan could have been more targeted at each occupation.

For telecoms installers, the MAC points to structural drivers of shortage “including an ageing workforce, high turnover and long training lead times”.

Sales and marketing hires lose out

The bigger effect for tech employers sits in the other column. Sales accounts and business development managers averaged 1,192 visas a year, more than the three digital occupations combined. The committee found “very limited evidence of historical shortage” in a group of 486,000 employees. Marketing associate professionals averaged 1,005 visas a year; the MAC says job adverts per 100 employee jobs in that occupation have fallen by more than 50% since 2022. Business sales executives, with 659 visas a year, passed the shortage test but failed on the quality of their Jobs Plan.

The committee’s wider objection is that these “office-based roles appear to rely on relatively generic skills which are more likely to exist within the domestic workforce already or be developed on the job”. Across five such occupations, visa grants accounted for 0.2% of employment in 2024–25. The MAC expects most of the reduction in migration from its advice to come from this group, and estimates the 82 occupations in scope accounted for around 10,000 visas a year, against around 4,000 for those it recommends.

The report is also candid about why smaller tech firms struggle with sponsorship even when a role qualifies. “Startups and scale-ups face high fixed and ongoing compliance costs that can be disproportionate relative to their size, deterring international recruitment,” it says. Fast hiring risks being delayed by sponsorship requirements, it adds, while remote work, contracting and project-based teams “do not fit easily” with a system built around one sponsoring employer and a fixed role.

A looser market makes the case

The committee’s argument rests on a labor market that has loosened since 2022. It counts 0.4 vacancies per unemployed person in January to March 2026, down from a record 1.0 in 2022. The latest official figures, published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) on 21 July, put unemployment at 4.9% in March to May 2026 and vacancies at 712,000 in April to June. Payrolled employees were 85,000 lower in May 2026 than a year earlier.

Recruiters see the same picture. The UK Report on Jobs from KPMG and the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), compiled by S&P Global from a panel of around 400 recruitment consultancies and published on 8 July, found candidate availability rising sharply in June, often because of redundancies, while overall demand for staff fell at the fastest rate since January. Permanent placements were still falling, though only marginally, and starting salaries rose at the fastest pace since January as employers competed for people with scarce skills.

Neil Carberry, chief executive of the REC, said the figures showed “truly hopeful signs”, adding: “Temporary and contract work once again leads the way, as firms react to demand without yet feeling confident enough to commit to larger scale permanent hiring.”

The other side of the argument came from inside the review. The Industrial Strategy Advisory Council and Skills England told the committee that leaving occupations off the list would undermine growth and business confidence for a small cut in migration. The MAC replied that, with migration equal to 0.2% of the workforce in the excluded occupations on the council’s own figure, it does not anticipate “major disruption to growth or Industrial Strategy delivery”.

Tech employers need a domestic pipeline

The advice is not yet policy, and the committee itself says its recommendations assume the government’s priorities have not changed since it commissioned the review in July 2025. But the direction is clear, and 18 months is a short window. The MAC proposes a lighter-touch review before that access expires, and expects future reviews to place more weight on clear evidence that Jobs Plans have delivered.

For hiring managers, that points to three moves. Any business that has relied on sponsoring sales, business development or marketing staff below degree level should assume that route is closing and build a domestic pipeline now, through graduate schemes, apprenticeships or promotion from support and customer roles. Teams that sponsor data analysts or network installers should use the 18 months to train UK staff alongside, because renewal will depend on visible progress. And founders weighing a first sponsor license should price in the compliance cost the MAC itself says can be disproportionate for startups and scale-ups.

The shortage list is no longer a safety valve for any role that is hard to fill. It now covers the jobs the government can tie to a training plan, which means UK tech employers will be judged on the plan as much as the vacancy.