The skills gap is widening as the British job market recovers, according to the latest survey conducted by the Recruitment Confidence Index (RCI).

Nearly half of employers (48%) expect recruitment activity to go up over the next six months.

However, such increases in recruitment activity are set to put pressure on pools of skilled workers, with the survey showing an especially tough climate for the sales and IT sectors.

One in two employers (50%) are expecting to encounter trouble filling sales vacancies – up from 40% three months ago – while 45% of organisations predict that they will find it harder to attract quality IT people, up from 34% three months ago.

The RCI quarterly trends survey is published by Cranfield School of Management and The Daily Telegraph.

Shaun Tyson, professor of human resources at Cranfield School of Management, commented: “We will always have problems with high-level skills in the UK because many organisations don’t invest enough in training and developing their people.

“The trend over the past years has been to limit training to the very specific skills that the organisation needs now, rather than training people for the future.”