More businesses are looking for IT professionals that also have the appropriate e-skills, as around 60% of capacity-planning jobs now require e-expertise.

A survey conducted by Computer Weekly found that a year ago, 1 in 10 IT jobs involved working with the internet or on an e-commerce application, now it is more likely to be 1 in 3 with the trend moving upwards.

The survey also highlighted that 8,000 jobs advertised required one or more internet-related skill, out of the 21,000 IT jobs that were on offer.

Among networking positions, the proportion of e-jobs is just around 12%, although there has been a rapid increase in demand.

Demand for e-skills is greatest in the publishing and media sector where over half of the IT jobs advertised were e-jobs. There was also a high proportion required from software houses, around half of all jobs advertised requested e-skills.

The engineering sector was the least demanded area for e-skills, with only 16 posts advertised requiring internet expertise. Other slow sectors include the utilities and public sector, where less than 1 in 5 of all IT jobs were e-jobs.

Salaries for e-jobs are slightly higher than traditional IT jobs, however IT professionals cannot expect an increase purely for acquiring the new expertise. Managers can also expect to earn more in an e-environment but overall salaries for e-jobs rose by an average 6% over the past year. The rise in internet-related pay is well above the 3.9% average earnings inflation across the UK industry and the 3.3% RPI inflation over the year to September.