Brussels, Belgium / RankWire.AI / – According to recent findings published by the EU agency Eurofound, the European Union is on track to fall short of its Digital Decade milestone of employing 20 million information and communications technology specialists by 2030. The Emirates News Agency’s official reports confirmed that despite ongoing hiring growth across the region’s tech industry, the EU is projected to miss its 2030 ICT target by 5 million workers. The study titled IT Sector in Focus: Evolution of the EU Digital Workforce revealed that most member states’ primary and vocational education systems are unable to keep pace with rising corporate demand for advanced digital skills. As a result, European companies increasingly depend on skilled labor migration from outside the EU to address critical staffing shortages.
Although a shortfall is anticipated, overall employment in Europe’s digital sector has experienced significant long-term growth over the past decade. Eurofound’s data shows that the number of ICT specialists in the European Union grew from 5.6 million in 2011 to 10.3 million in 2024, an increase of 81 percent. During the same period, ICT professionals’ share of total employment in Europe rose from 3 percent to 5 percent. Nevertheless, annual growth rates of 7 to 8 percent in the sector remain inadequate to bridge the gap needed to reach the 20 million benchmark set by European policymakers by the decade’s end.
Significant disparities in digital employment persist across individual EU member states. Eurofound reported that ICT specialists made up 8.6 percent of total employment in Sweden, 8 percent in Luxembourg, and 7.8 percent in Finland during 2024. Conversely, in Greece, digital specialists accounted for just 2.5 percent, and in Romania, 2.8 percent of the workforce. Growth trajectories also vary widely; Estonia more than doubled its ICT workforce proportion from 3.4 percent to 7.2 percent between 2011 and 2024, while other countries saw only minor percentage increases within the same timeframe.
Educational Gaps Lead to Increased External Hiring
Surveys of enterprises across the bloc revealed that 57 percent of European firms struggled with severe recruitment challenges when trying to fill IT roles in 2024. Talent shortages are especially acute for senior engineering positions and specialized fields such as cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, generative AI, and cloud infrastructure. To meet these operational needs, companies have turned to international talent sources, increasing the share of ICT specialists born outside the EU from 9.2 percent in 2021 to 11.9 percent in 2024.
Gender disparities continue to limit the overall potential of the EU’s digital workforce. Eurofound reported that women represented fewer than one in five ICT specialists across the 27 EU member states in 2024, holding just a 19 percent share. Moreover, gender pay gaps in the broader information and communications sector approached 20 percent in 2022, surpassing the economy-wide average of 13 percent. Researchers noted that the underrepresentation of women results in European industries operating with less than three quarters of their potential digital talent pool, thereby restricting diversity and innovation in technology development.
Core Software Sector Growth Highlights Persistent Skills Gap
The report emphasized that although ICT roles generally offer above-average pay, advanced skills, and strong employment conditions, these factors alone cannot resolve the structural labor shortage. With the EU projected to fall short of its 2030 ICT target by 5 million workers, experts stressed that bridging this gap will require coordinated policy efforts to expand domestic educational programs and facilitate intra-EU labor mobility. The study drew on quantitative data, contributions from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents, and insights from LinkedIn Economic Graph.
European policymakers and industry leaders face mounting pressure to adapt national vocational training frameworks to meet future digital economy needs. Eurofound concluded that neglecting domestic training deficiencies will heighten reliance on external labor markets and threaten broader European digital transformation ambitions. Ongoing reviews of workforce policies aim to increase domestic training capacity, promote female participation in technical fields, and maintain Europe’s competitiveness in the global technology arena.