The European market of digital products and services (“EU data market") is set to almost double in size from EUR 59.5 billion in 2016 to EUR 106.8 billion by 2020, according to the high growth scenario set out in the latest European Data Market study published by the European Commission. The study found that 6.16 million people in Europe worked in data-related jobs in 2016, a figure that’s expected to increase at a compound average growth rate of 14.1 percent to hit 10.43 million by 2020.
According to the monitoring tool, in 2016 there was a gap between total demand and supply of data workers of 420,000 unfilled data worker positions in the EU. By 2020, the EU is forecasted to face a data skills gap corresponding to 769,000 unfilled positions, above all in the large Member States such as Germany and France.
The report added that the EU data industry as a whole comprised approximately of 255,000 data companies in 2016, a figure that's set to increase at a CAGR of 8.9 percent to 359,050 by 2020 under the high growth scenario forecast.
