Italy ranks third from bottom in the EU for ICT specialists

Brussels – In 2025, 10.45 million people across the European Union were employed as “specialists in information and communication technologies“ (ITC), accounting for 5 per cent of the total workforce. The figures, released by the EU’s statistical office (Eurostat), reflect a slight but steady increase. The proportion, the office explains, rose by 0.1 percentage points compared with the previous year. The number of ICT specialists saw more sustained growth in 2020 (+7.1 per cent) and in 2021 (+5.7 per cent). It lost momentum in subsequent years: +4.0 per cent between 2022 and 2023, +4.5 per cent between 2023 and 2024, and +2.6 per cent between 2024 and 2025. Despite the recent slowdown, growth is still present and a sign of the economy’s resilience to economic fluctuations, according to Eurostat. 

The proportion of ICT specialists in the total workforce has also risen, from 3.5 per cent in 2015 to 5 per cent in 2025. Furthermore, the number of ICT specialists employed in the EU has increased by 59.4 per cent between 2015 and 2025, a rise six times higher than the corresponding increase (9.8 per cent) in total employment. 

The EU country with the highest proportion of ICT specialists out of the total workforce is Sweden, at 8.9 per cent, a record it had already achieved in 2024. It is followed by Luxembourg (8.7 per cent) and Finland (7.8 per cent). The lowest proportions, however, were recorded in Greece (2.5 per cent), Romania (2.7 per cent) and Italy (3.8 per cent). Overall, however, Germany has the most ICT workers, employing 2.3 million and accounting for more than a fifth of the EU’s ICT specialists. 

As regards gender distribution, in 2025, the vast majority (80.5 per cent) of ICT specialists employed in the EU were men. Compared with 2015, the proportion of women increased by 3 percentage points. The lowest proportions of women employed as ICT specialists were recorded in the Czech Republic (12.9 per cent), Hungary (15 per cent), and Slovakia (15.5 per cent). Higher proportions, on the other hand, were found in Romania (27.8 per cent), Latvia (25.9 per cent), and Bulgaria (25 per cent).