The numbers

Everybody quotes statistics about digital skills. Most do not say where they came from. Here is every number used on this site, with its source and date — including the ones that undermine the argument, and the ones that were checked and thrown out.

The numbers used here

Office for National Statistics · 20 July 2026

Artificial intelligence in UK businesses: 2023 to 2026

35% of UK businesses with 10+ employees use at least one AI technology (June 2026)
28% of businesses with 0–9 employees; 49% of businesses with 250+
11% report more than half their workforce has received AI training

Official statistics. Business Insights and Conditions Survey. Always state the employee-size base in the same sentence as the figure.

Ipsos for Lloyds Banking Group · Fieldwork 5 March – 2 April 2025

Essential Digital Skills 2025

8.0 million UK adults (15%) cannot do all eight Foundation Level tasks
4.0 million (8%) lack Essential Digital Skills for Life
7.1 million labour-force adults (17%) lack them for Work
53% Foundation Level attainment among adults with no formal qualifications, against 93% of graduates

n=4,175. The 53%/93% split is drawn from the full report rather than the published summary page and is pending a page-number check.

Cebr for FutureDotNow, supported by DSIT · March 2025

The Economic Impact of Closing the Work Essential Digital Skills Gap

52% of the UK labour force cannot complete all 20 Work Essential Digital Skills tasks
Closing the gap estimated at £23.1 billion a year in GVA

Having 'Essential Digital Skills for Work' requires one task in each of five areas. That is why 83% 'have' them while 52% cannot do all twenty. Both are true.

Ofcom · 2 April 2026

Adults' Media Use and Attitudes 2026

54% of UK adults use AI tools, rising to 79% of 16–24s
20% of online UK adults depend exclusively on a smartphone
89% feel confident online overall, but only 72% are confident judging accuracy

The PDF returns 403 to automated link checks. Verified by hand.

King's College London Policy Institute and King's Institute for AI · Published 19 May 2026

Public attitudes to AI

69% of workers are worried about AI's economic impact
41% of the public say they are afraid of AI

Fieldwork by Opinium, 16–29 April 2026, n=4,508.

Department for Education · 15 July 2026

Essential digital skills standards: 2026

Five levels, Entry 1 to Level 2, updated and expanded in response to technological change, including artificial intelligence

Crown copyright. The qualifications behind it have not been rewritten and no implementation date has been set. Read the licence statement before adapting rather than citing.

Skills England · 28 January 2026

AI foundation skills for work

Three domains: technical, non-technical, and responsible and ethical AI foundation skills, with six competencies across them

Open Government Licence v3.0 — reusable and adaptable, including commercially, with attribution. The exact competency-to-domain mapping is pending a check against the published benchmark.

Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government · Checked 8 August 2026

Social Tenant Access to Information Requirements: policy statement

Publication scheme requirement from 1 October 2026
Individual information request rights from 1 April 2027
Applies to private registered providers of social housing

Tenant is defined broadly, including licensees and shared owners holding under 100% equity.

Department for Education · Published 24 July 2025

Employer Skills Survey 2024

UK employer training investment fell to £53.0bn in 2024, down 10.2% in real terms from £59.0bn in 2022
Per-employee spend fell from £1,960 to £1,700

22,712 employers. Publishes no headline digital or AI skills gap figure.

Department for Science, Innovation and Technology · 28 January 2026

AI Skills Boost expansion

Target of 10 million workers upskilled in AI by 2030
Including at least 2 million SME employees

The '21% of workers feel confident using AI at work' figure associated with this release could not be located in a published data table and is not used here.

Numbers you will see elsewhere that are not used here

This section is the point of the page. Each of these is in circulation. Each was checked. None is used.

Only 21% of UK workers feel confident using AI at work.

Appears in the DSIT AI Skills Boost release of 28 January 2026. It could not be located in a published data table, and the fieldwork behind the research programme completed in March 2025 — sixteen months before it was quoted. The ONS training figure is six days old and traceable, so that is used instead.

46% of small businesses lack the skills or knowledge to use AI effectively.

Same release, attributed to the FSB in secondary coverage. The underlying publication could not be found.

60% of employers cite AI skill gaps.

This figure does not exist in the survey it is attributed to. The actual figures are 25% and 27%, on a base of 373 employers who use or plan to use AI, not all employers. The likely origin is a separate line about six in ten employers not using AI and not planning to, which is a non-adoption figure rather than a skills figure.

3.8 million lack essential digital skills for life; 7.3 million for work.

Still widely repeated in 2026 government and sector documents. These come from the 2024 Consumer Digital Index and are superseded by the 2025 figures of 4.0m and 7.1m.

Any ONS figure for internet non-use.

The ONS Internet users series was discontinued; a notice dated 3 May 2023 directs users to Ofcom. The last data is from 2020.

Any North East-specific digital skills statistic.

The most recent regional work relies on the discontinued ONS series and cannot be refreshed. There is no current North East measure of digital skills. National figures are used here and labelled national.

What is not known

There is no official UK measure of individual adults' AI skills against a defined framework. The ONS measures business adoption. Nobody measures people. The first real measurement arrives with the DSIT survey in 2027.
There is no current regional breakdown of digital skills below nation level.
The Employer Skills Survey 2024 — 22,712 employers, the most authoritative UK employer survey — publishes no headline digital or AI skills gap figure.
There is almost no independent evidence that digital skills training works at scale. The widely-quoted £9.48-return-per-£1 figure is one organisation's evaluation of its own programmes.

Saying these out loud costs something. It is also the reason anything else on this page is worth believing.

Last reviewed 8 August 2026