There's no prizes for guessing the answer to this poser. Two-thirds of the UK's IT vacancies are concentrated in London and the South East while other parts of the UK are virtually dead as far as IT recruitment is concerned.

The answer may not come as a surprise but the shear scale of the South East skew might. 38% of all UK IT jobs are for postings in London and a further 27% are in the South East, this for a region with only 25% of the UK population according to ReThink Recruitment, a nationwide IT recruitment agency.

Following up in third place was the North West with just 6.6% but even this appears high when compared to the North East with just 1.4% and Wales and Northern Ireland with a meagre 1%.

IT in the City is inevitably being driven in part by the current crop of compliance legislation and the fact that each investment bank has their own inhouse development team. However, systems are also having to be upgraded to deal with higher volumes of more complex transactions brought about not only as result of the legislation but just because of an increase in transactions across the globe. This was highlighted by ReThink Recruitment director Jon Butterfield in a statement.

Butterfield said, "Higher transaction volumes in areas like credit derivatives, international bonds and interest rate swaps are driving demand for faster and more robust IT systems in the City. But also the industry increasingly views IT as key to competitive advantage."

Public sector jobs also make up a large number of IT vacancies and with central government located in London this is where the majority of public sector IT jobs have been located.

New IT jobs by region, according to ReThink:

• London - 38.3 per cent
• South East - 27.2 per cent
• North West - 6.6 per cent
• South West - 5.3 per cent
• West Midlands - 5 per cent
• Yorkshire & Humberside - 4.8 per cent
• East Midlands - 4.2 per cent
• Scotland 3.4 per cent
• East Anglia - 3.1 per cent
• North East - 1.4 per cent
• Wales - 1 per cent
• Northern Ireland - 1 per cent

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