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The Institute for Employment Studies (IES) indicates that 600,000 fewer people are employed now than at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, while a further 400,000 have become economically inactive. In fact, there are now 1.1 million fewer workers in the labour market than there would have been if pre-crisis trends had continued. While this shortfall can partly be explained by young people choosing to continue in education, three-fifths of those exiting the labour market were older people. But in a world in which so-called legacy systems, and particularly mainframes which have now been around for 70 years, are more widespread than you might think, this situation has inevitable skills implications. This is exacerbated by the fact that there is little focus in this area at university level and people under 30 rarely consider such machines “sexy” or tend to be unaware of just how important they are to many organisations. Such a situation is inevitably worrying for businesses in sectors where mainframes often have mission-critical ...