Where there are skills, there's a skills gap. Something that has come to prominence in the last five years or so is a disconnect between the employable skills that graduates are leaving university with, and the skills that businesses say they need potential employees to possess. That's the more general definition of a skills gap. A more industry-specific definition is that there are certain professions which are suffering a mass shortage of applicants to roles, significant examples of which are jobs that require STEM subjects (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics).