Germany’s ICT Sector Proves to Be Major Job Creator

The significance of the ICT (information and communication technologies) sector for the German economy has continued to grow, with gross value added in this sector rising by 3.8 per cent to 105 billion euros in 2016. With more than 1.1 million people employed in the German ICT sector, this branch of economy also appears to be a long-term job creator. These are the findings of the Monitoring Report DIGITAL Economy 2017, a report published regularly by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW), Mannheim, in cooperation with the market research institute Kantar TNS and commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy (BMWi).

Based on current trends, the ICT sector is streaks ahead of the more traditional industrial sectors such as the automobile and mechanical engineering or the chemical and pharmaceutical industries. “It’s not just the 41,000 new jobs created in 2016 that paint a positive picture, but the 192,000 jobs that have been created in total in the ICT sector since 2010. This is a higher rate of growth than in any other sector of the economy,” says Professor Irene Bertschek, head of the ZEW Research Department “Digital Economy”.

The recent increase in gross value added in the ICT sector can be attributed entirely to the growing amount of value added being generated by ICT service providers. In 2016 their innovation budgets rose to 17.2 billion euros, an increase of almost 18 per cent compared to the previous year.

The Monitoring Report DIGITAL Economy 2017 is published on a yearly basis by Kantar TNS and ZEW Mannheim on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy. The summary of this year’s report (in English) can be downloaded here while the full version (in German) is available at www.tns-infratest.com/bmwi.

For further information please contact

Prof. Dr. Irene Bertschek, Phone +49 (0)621/1235-178, E-mail irene.bertschek@zew.de