Safety measures implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic were likely to have provided a boost to employment in the EU telecommunications sector, including wired, wireless, satellite and other telecommunications activities.
The number of people (aged 20 to 64) who were employed in telecommunications had been declining in the run-up to the COVID-19 pandemic, falling from 1 181 thousand in the first quarter of 2008 to 823 thousand in the fourth quarter of 2019. However, in the first two quarters of 2020, this number increased sharply.
In the second quarter of 2020, 1 043 thousand people were employed in the telecommunications sector. This represents a 7% increase from the first quarter of 2020 and a 21% rise when compared with the second quarter of 2019.
Source dataset: LFSQ_EGAN22D
Compared with the second quarter of 2019, the number of people employed in telecommunications increased in 9 out of 24 Member States with available data in the second quarter of 2020, while it remained stable in Portugal. In contrast, employment in telecommunications sector declined in the remaining 14 Member States with available data.
Notes:
- For the purpose of this article, ‘Telecommunications’, as defined under NACE Rev.2 classification, refers to the following economic activities: 61.1 - Wired telecommunications activities, 61.2 - Wireless telecommunications activities, 61.3 - Satellite telecommunications activities, and 61.9 - Other telecommunications activities.
- Data for the second quarter of 2020 have low reliability for Estonia, Croatia, Luxembourg, Malta and Slovenia, and are not available for Latvia and Lithuania due to very low reliability.
- Due to technical issues with the introduction of the new German system of integrated household surveys, including the LFS, data for Germany are not disseminated for the first and the second quarter of 2020. However, German data for these quarters are used to calculate the EU aggregates. For more information, see here.
- The European Union (EU) includes 27 EU Member States. The United Kingdom left the European Union on 31 January 2020. Further information is published here.
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