Ben Hamilton
December 4th, 2017

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“We’ve finally got somebody who understands what these keys mean!” (photo: Tomasz Sienicki)

It really pays to speak Danish in the UK if you work in IT. Only a knowledge of Japanese would enable you to earn more money, according to an analysis carried out by British job search engine provider Adzuna Towers.

The average salary paid to Japanese-speaking IT workers in the UK is 64,211 pounds a year, ahead of a top six comprising Danish (55,628), German (51,325), Dutch (50,871), French (46,198) and Swedish (44,181).

A sizeable premium
On average, Danish-speaking IT workers earn 28,174 pounds a year more than their UK-based countrymen, again behind Japanese (32,995 more) and a long way ahead of Dutch (18,029), Swedish (15,659) and Germay (14,762).

Overall, almost every language has a noticeable salary premium for jobs in IT, with only Arabic-speaking IT positions below the national average in the UK.

Few jobs available
However, Adzuna noted that the number of available Danish-speaking IT jobs at the time of the study was pretty low at 24 – and likewise for Japanese, which had 30.

This compared poorly to the 936 German-speaking positions, while the number of positions for French (737) and Dutch (358) was also high.

A demand for Danish is highest in the London area, where overall there were 436 available positions in 2017, making it the ninth most sought after language in the capital.

Poor prospects since Brexit
According to Doug Monro, the co-founder of Adzuna, the demand for languages like Danish is on the slide following Brexit.

“Last year, a very strong trend for European languages was in evidence, but employers are now contemplating a future outside the EU,” he said.

“In 2017, this has begun to give way to preference for Asian languages, like Japanese and Chinese. Perhaps this is a sign that businesses are looking further afield for growth opportunities.”