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G4: Innovation and digitalisation

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Digitalisation is transforming the society and the economy. It facilitates global outreach for business, interaction with customers and business partners, it helps them streamline and optimise their operations. Consequently, by changing many occupations and work-related tasks, digitalisation has impact on the labour market. Digital technologies are increasingly applied in professional activities. Thus, there is a growing need for qualified personnel able to deal with increasingly technology- and data-intensive working environments.

Statistics on labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements (OJAs) provide detailed and timely information on employers’ needs for digital professionals. They complement the existing set of statistics on digital skills and ICT specialists.

Digital transformation is one of the European Commission’s main political priorities for the coming years. At the end of 2022, the Commission presented the digital decade policy programme, which sets a vision and targets for a successful digital transformation of Europe by 2030.

In this context, the Commission proposed a digital compass, which sets out concrete targets for achieving the EU’s digital ambitions. These are centred around four cardinal points: skills, digital transformation of businesses, secure and sustainable digital infrastructures and digitalisation of public services. One of the Digital Compass objectives related to skills is that by 2030 at least 20 million ICT specialists are employed within the Union.

The indicators on the labour market demand for ICT specialists are based on information web scraped from the Online Job Advertisements (OJAs) posted on the internet. The source dataset of OJAs covers millions of ads posted in EU countries, collected from hundreds of web sources including job search engines and public employment services’ websites. The information retrieved from these ads are processed to classify them according to variables, such as occupation or location.

ICT specialists definition

Following OECD, Eurostat defines ICT specialists as "workers who have the ability to develop, operate and maintain ICT systems, and for whom ICT constitute the main part of their job".

Operationalised in terms of International Standard Classification of Occupations (ISCO) codes, this definition converts into a statistical definition of ICT specialists. From 2011 onwards, correspondingly to the application of the ISCO-08, Eurostat and OECD adopted a joint approach which considers the following occupations to be treated as ICT specialists:

Concepts

It is important to note that the data from OJAs should not be compared to the job vacancies statistics. Firstly, the source dataset of OJAs, used for producing indicators on labour market demand for ICT specialists in OJAs, is referring only to the online postings of job positions. Moreover, online job advertisements are not equivalent to job vacancies. The two concepts are related, however there may be vacancies that are not advertised, and on the other hand, some employers post online job advertisements even when they don’t intend to fill them either immediately or within a specific period of time, or it might happen that one online job advertisement refers to several vacancies at the same time.

Indicators

Two sets of quantitative indicators are derived from OJAs dataset, providing information on the employers’ demand for ICT specialists and the change in the demand for ICT specialists on the labour market.

Labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements:

1. Labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements

The indicator provides information on the demand of employers for ICT specialists and is calculated as a percentage of the online job advertisements for ISCO-08 codes corresponding to occupations classified as ICT specialists according to the Eurostat-OECD definition. The indicator is published quarterly and refers to a period of the last 4 quarters (i.e. is calculated on four rolling quarters) to smooth seasonal effects.

(Number of OJAs referring to ICT specialists in (Q_(i-3) to Q_i ))/(Total number of OJAs in (Q_(i-3)  to Q_i ) )∙100%,

where Q_i – the latest quarter available.

The data is available in the following breakdowns: by NUTS-2 region.

2. Labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements by ICT occupation sub-groups.

The indicator provides information on the distribution of the demand for ICT specialists by occupation sub-group. In other words it presents a weight of each ICT occupation sub-group in all of the online ICT job advertisements. The following sub-groups of ICT occupations are distinguished according to ISCO-08 codes:

133 ICT Service managers 

251 Software and applications developers and analysts 

252 Database and network professionals 

351 ICT operations and user support technicians 

352 Telecommunications and broadcasting technicians 

742 Electronics and telecommunications installers and repairers

Other ICT specialists (that are primarily involved in the production of ICT goods and services), which include the following occupations:

    2152 Electronics engineers 

    2153 Telecommunications engineers 

    2166 Graphic and multimedia designers 

    2356 Information technology trainers 

    2434 ICT sales professionals 

    3114 Electronics engineering technicians 

Change in the demand for ICT specialists on the labour market:

3. Percentage change in the labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements

The indicator provides information on the percentage change in the labour market demand for ICT specialists (ISCO-08 codes corresponding to occupations classified as ICT specialists according to the Eurostat-OECD definition) in a given quarter compared to the same quarter of the previous year.

((Number of OJAs referring to ICT specialists in Q_i)/(Number of OJAs referring to ICT specialists in Q_(i-4) )-1)∙100%

The data is available in the following breakdowns: by NUTS-2 region.

For indicators 1: % of total number of online job advertisements

For indicator 2: % of total number of online job advertisements for ICT specialists

For indicator 3: % change Q/Q-4

The source dataset covers the period from 2019 onwards.

As the indicators 1 and 2 have a reference period of the last 4 quarters (i.e. are calculated on four rolling quarters), the first data point is available for the period Q1 2019 to Q4 2019. As the indicator 3 is a change in a quarter compared to the same quarter of the previous year, the first data point is available for Q1 2020.

The indicator is produced according to high-level quality standards. Details on accuracy of the source data used can be found in the metadata of the source dataset (see link to related metadata).

WIH-OJA

Every quarter

Quarterly

T+1 quarter

Q+1

All EU MS

and UK

Data are presented for all EU Member States and the United Kingdom

All EU MS

and UK

Data are comparable between all EU Member States and other presented countries.

< 5 years

> 4 data points

News item

See tables:

Labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements, by NUTS 2 regions - % of online job advertisements – experimental statistics (isoc_sk_oja1)

Labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements, by occupation (ISCO 2008) - % of online job advertisements for ICT specialists – experimental statistics (isoc_sk_oja2)

Labour market demand for ICT specialists in online job advertisements, by NUTS 2 regions – percentage change Q/Q-4 – experimental statistics (isoc_sk_oja3)

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