Digital Skills in Northern Ireland 2021/22

Date published: 04 November 2022

A new publication examining the level of digital skills of people in Northern Ireland was released at 9:30am today.

The Digital Skills in Northern Ireland publication was released at 9.30am today. This paper examines the level of digital skills of people aged 16 and over in Northern Ireland, as sourced from the Continuous Household Survey. Additional analysis of digital skills levels is also provided for sex, age, labour market status and deprivation quintile (least and most deprived).

Key points:

• The majority of people aged 16 and over in Northern Ireland had a basic level of digital skills in 2021/22 (57% or 860,000 people)
• Almost one in five people aged 16 and over in NI had no digital skills (18% or 264,000 people).
• When comparing across age groups, nearly half of those aged 65 and over (47%) had no digital skills, compared to around 6-7% of those aged between 16 and 49.
• A higher proportion of those in the most deprived areas had no digital skills (21% compared to 15% in the least deprived).
• Similar proportions of males and females had no digital skills (17% and 18% respectively).
• Those between the ages of 25 to 49 had the highest proportion with above basic digital skills (approximately 35%). This is in comparison to 6.3% for those aged 65 and over.

The statistical bulletin and associated tables are available on the Digital Skills in Northern Ireland 2021/22 page.