Digital skills charity Go ON UK, is reporting that about 12.6 million people in the United Kingdom lack at least one of five digital skills it deems as important in their Basic Digital Skills UK report, 2015.

The charity defines these skills as managing information, communicating, transacting, problem solving and creating basic digital content.

The report proves that the digital world is really a millennial’s playground with basic digital skills starting to decline in the 45 to 54 year-old age range. One of the most important pieces of data, however, is the one that shows that less than 50% of the people observed in the 65-year-old age bracket demonstrated all five of the skills mention above.  This particular callout is important because workforce reports show that people are starting to work well past the age of 65.  In order to stay relevant and valuable, they will need to catch up.

Go ON UK is also reporting that substandard digital skills are causing recruitment problems because almost all jobs are advertised online only, and are applied for online only.  If a person lacks the skills necessary to even search for a job, he or she will certainly never be a candidate.  HR experts are trying to convey to organisations that, although these skills are more prevalent now than they used to be, these skills are not as common as we think.

The good news is that almost 90% of currently employed people in the UK exhibit these five skills.  Greater London has the highest levels of people with all five skills, while Wales has the lowest.  Unsurprisingly, students and people in school have the highest levels of digital skills.

The findings from the report have been incorporated into the charity’s Digital Exclusion Heatmap, an easy to digest representation that illustrates the level of digital skills across the entire United Kingdom.