The City Council steps on the accelerator in the training of technological talent

One of the most recurrent demands of Barcelona's technology sector is to have more professionals so that the lack of talent does not represent a brake on the sector's growth rate. In this context, the Barcelona City Council has focused on training programmers and data analysts: through Barcelona Activa, it plans to train 3,500 people between 2025 and 2029 in these areas, through the IT Academy.

To this end, the City Council is preparing a tender of 11.6 million euros, distributed in up to eight lots, aimed at leading companies in this field with the purpose of making their digital courses available to all citizens, as explained by the Councilor for Economic Promotion and president of Barcelona Activa, Raquel Gil.

The training will be carried out through the IT Academy, whose job placement rate rises to 84%. In addition, it has another relevant fact: 40% of the course participants are women, something that can contribute to broadening their presence in the technology sector, which currently has 32% women in its staff.

With this tender, to which companies can apply until October 7, Barcelona emphasizes not only attracting talent, but also generating it, often transforming the careers of professionals with previous jobs unrelated to the technological field. And the training is public, free, and open to any citizen, without prior requirements. In this way, the initiative aims to make training available to anyone looking for a job transformation or an improvement in their employability within their sector.

Since 2018, IT Academy has trained nearly 3,200 people in highly demanded profiles. One of the pillars in the center's methodology is the support students receive, which is part of a comprehensive retraining strategy to offer the opportunity to train from scratch.

All this in a context where the demand for digital talent has doubled in Barcelona in the last five years. An example of this are the 9,231 vacancies that remained unfilled in 2023, according to the 2024 Barometer of the technology sector in Catalonia, prepared by the Cercle Tecnològic. The entity calculates that having covered these jobs could have added 1,805 million euros more to the sector's 26,446 million turnover, which wants to continue growing without the lack of talent representing an obstacle to its development.