Europe’s push to build a world-class digital workforce is running into a hard numbers problem: the EU is on course to be five million ICT specialists short of its 2030 Digital Decade goal of employing 20 million people in information and communications technology, according to research from Eurofound.
In a new report, the EU research agency warns that education systems and vocational education and training programmes across most member states are not producing enough qualified workers to match both current hiring needs and the demand expected in coming years.
With domestic pipelines failing to keep pace, the study says employers are increasingly turning outward, making labour migration from non-EU countries a central source of recruitment for the sector.
Ireland stands out for its sharp rise in ICT employment, Eurofound found. The share of the country’s workforce employed as ICT specialists climbed from 4.7% of total employment in 2011 to 6.3% in 2024.
That rate puts Ireland ahead of the EU average of 5%.
However, the report notes that Ireland has a lower-than-average share of younger people in ICT jobs. Across the EU in 2024, 37.2% of ICT workers were aged 35 or under; in Ireland, the figure was 34.4%.
At the bloc level, ICT specialists have become a steadily larger part of the labour market, increasing from 3% of total EU employment in 2011 to 5% in 2024.
Over the same period, the headcount of ICT specialists surged to 10.3 million, an 81% jump from 5.6 million.
Despite that expansion, Eurofound highlights persistent imbalances in who benefits from the sector’s growth. Women remain markedly under-represented, making up fewer than one in five ICT specialists in 2024. The agency also points to pay inequities: in 2022, the gender pay gap across the broader sector was nearly 20%, compared with a 13% average across the economy.
“The research highlights that addressing these shortages requires targeted policy intervention focused on domestic talent supply and mobility rather than job quality adjustments, as IT roles already feature above-average pay and working conditions,” Eurofound said.
“Closing the gender employment gap is an urgent economic necessity, as failing to attract women means operating with less than three-quarters of the potential talent pool,” it added.
Eurofound is an EU agency based in Dublin that provides information, advice and expertise on working conditions, industrial relations, and labour market change.
