In the 21st century economy, data has become a key resource. In particular, the optimisation of processes and supply chains as well as the analysis of customer requirements require the procurement, analysis, organisation and preparation of data. Furthermore, data and data-driven methods play an important role as a product or service and business model.
The demand for workers with skills in collecting, analysing and harnessing data is correspondingly high. A study by the German Economic Institute has now examined the sector-specific demand for data-related skills on the German labour market. To this end, 4.5 million online job advertisements from 2022 were classified using a machine learning model.
The resulting share of data-related job advertisements in all job advertisements is 21.3 %. In an earlier survey from 2019, the figure was just 17.4 %. Broken down by sector, a very heterogeneous picture emerges: the proportion of job advertisements requiring high data skills is by far the highest in the ICT sector at 48.0%, followed by the business services sector at 34.4% and the automotive sector at 33.5%. Bringing up the rear is the tourism sector with only 6.5% data-related job adverts.
Due to the existing shortage of skilled labour, the increasing demand for employees with high data-related qualifications poses a challenge for companies in the transformation towards the data economy. To alleviate this problem, the study proposes concrete policy measures to facilitate the recruitment of foreign skilled workers and improve the range of data-specific training and further education opportunities.
