A fluency in programming is not the same as being a programmer.

It seems the UK government (and the US too), think that we should be teaching more children to program. I think so too. I don't necessarily think that equates to us needing more "programmers".

Many jobs such as most engineering and science posts and an increasing amount of financial jobs needs not just maths, but an appreciation of programming to be able to understand critical and widespread aspects of the job. Now just as those people are not all mathematicians, but need some maths to do their job,

I think that a greater number of workers should know about programming and computers - without necessarily calling themselves programmers as the need is there.