The employment shifts associated with Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
have had a ground-breaking impact on economies all over the world and have been a
major concern for policymakers and private business in recent decades. Though the need to
precisely capture and carefully analyze the employment effects associated with the
production and deployment of ICT has been widely recognized, policy debate about ICTrelated
employment has not been well-informed by good quality statistical information on
the structure of the ICT labour market. In part, this has been due to the absence of an
agreed terminology for describing and quantifying ICT occupations both inside and outside
the ICT sector.
This paper aims to supply an empirical researcher with some methodological insights on
how to describe the ICT employment landscape in the EU countries. It provides background
information on the different taxonomies used to capture ICT employment dynamics, and
summarises the opportunities and challenges related to the data. This paper’s primary
objective is to stimulate and promote discussion rather than to provide a definitive solution.
This is not a research paper but rather a technical note, intended for empirical economists
dealing with the employment statistics.