ICT Skills and Employment

This chapter analyses ICT-related employment, focusing on the impacts of the financial and economic crisis and the recovery. Almost 16 million people are employed in the ICT sector in OECD countries, and they represent close to 6% of total OECD business sector employment. Growth in the sector has been somewhat higher than in business overall. Employment dropped in ICT goods sectors during the crisis and has mostly remained flat in ICT services. However, despite year-on-year falls of 6-7% in ICT manufacturing employment, the large declines in the downturn around 2002-03 have not occurred, and ICT-related vacancy rates were growing month on month in early 2010. ICT specialists make up around 3-4% of total employment in most OECD countries, a share that has risen consistently with demand for ICT specialist skills across the economy. ICT-using occupations make up over 20% of total employment in most countries, and have remained quite stable. This chapter highlights some areas that promise to develop new ICT employment – green ICT, “smart” applications and cloud computing – but job generation has generally tended to be slow. It is suggested that the ICT sector will continue to be a more important contributor to value added and growth than to employment, but that wider applications, for example in “smart” energy systems, buildings and transport, will begin to provide jobs throughout the economy.