ICT Skills and Employment

This report forms part of the 2004 OECD Information Technology Outlook. Two new measures of ICT-skilled employment are constructed, one of ICT specialists and one which includes basic and advanced ICT users and ICT specialists, and calculates the share of such employment in the economy and by sector. The link with productivity is examined, and the report also looks at the various ways in which ICT skills needs can be satisfied, namely through education, training, outsourcing and immigration. The role of Internet recruitment is also analysed.

This work is the first in a series of forthcoming reports looking at the distribution of ICT skilled employment in the economy and examining the role of ICT-skilled employment in trade in ICT-enabled services and international sourcing of services, or offshoring. The ongoing development of ICT products and services and the increasing integration of ICTs into business processes, combined with the presence of a pool of ICT-skilled labour, will have an increasing impact on the spatial distribution of economic activities.

The report can be downloaded here.