IT staff in the UK are mostly "cheap labour"
Don't mean to insult my dear collegues, but from my very recent experience, I would say, most companies want a java, C#, C++, VB, bash and perl speaking sys admin security guru, who has at least 30years of dev experience, and all that for ideal around 14kpa. oh yeah, of course, there also has to be at least 25years of virtualisation with xen and vmware on EMC, IBM/LSI, with aditional AIX, HP-UX, Linux, Solaris, DOS, Windows, and SCO Unix knowledge.
mmmhhh did I forget anything?
Well, I work mostly as a contractor, mostly outside the country since the working environment is usually s%^&t and it is more comfortable and cheaper or same price to commute once a week to mainland europe, than to live in the M$ corridor and commute to London everyday.
Even though I do like living here, working in the UK is absolute 5h1t.
So even though I have a family, I decided to contract outside, and just live here with the family.
I get paid better, I enjoy the work more, and my family gets to travel occasionally when they tag along.
P.S.
In Germany for instance I get get nearly double the hourly rate, than over here....