Belgium excels with highly qualified IT professionals
A new study of the EU Statistical Office Eurostat shows that Belgium - after Spain - has the highest percentage of IT specialists with higher education levels. Almost 73% of Belgian IT professionals have an academic degree.
In our ever growing digitalized world, more and more Europeans are working as IT specialists. In 2014 about 8 million Europeans were employed in the sector, one million more than three years ago. In almost all EU Member States both their absolute and relative share has grown.
European IT jobs are mostly concentrated in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, together accounting for almost half of all jobs. However, the highest growth rates were seen in Portugal, Germany, Finland, France, Luxembourg and... Belgium.
Between 2011 and 2014 the number of IT jobs in Belgium grew from 160,000 to 200,000. That means that currently 4.4% of working Belgians are active as an IT specialist. That does not make us the largest IT country of Europe, but we are doing better than the European average, which is 3.7%.
The sector remains male dominated. On average 1 out of 5 IT professionals is female, in other sectors this is 1 in 2 workers.
The continued growth in the number of IT jobs does not mean the saturation level is almost reached. 46% of the Belgian companies indicate that they still have job vacancies open where IT skills are needed.