Those employed in the ICT sector continue to grow despite Covid-19

Catalans employed in the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector continue to grow, becoming one of the few sectors that resists the shake-up caused by Covid-19 in the labor market. According to data from the latest Active Population Survey (EPA), the ICT sector reached 128,700 workers in the third quarter of 2020, representing almost 4% of the employed population.

Despite the coronavirus crisis, employment in this sector has increased by an accumulated 12.6% between January and September 2020 and by 19% when compared to the third quarter of a year ago. Thus, the ICT sector added 1,000 workers in the first quarter of 2020; 8,800 in the second, and 4,600 in the third, managing to gain 14,400 more employed people this year.

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The Department of Digital Policies and Public Administration maintains that these data "confirm and consolidate the technological sector as an engine of economic growth and employment in Catalonia and, therefore, as one of the most powerful sectors of the Catalan economy and key for economic and social reactivation." In this sense, the Generalitat indicates that the figures obtained by this sector during 2020 are part of the trend it has been registering in the last five years, a period in which no other area has grown as much as ICT has.

Specifically, the ICT sector has gone from 87,700 employed people in 2014 to 106,400 in 2019, about 18,700 more in five years, according to figures collected by the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce based on the EPA. And not only that: in this period, the weight of employed people in the ICT sector has also grown, from 2.9% to 3.1%. The corporation emphasizes that the behavior of ICT in recent years, and also this 2020, is driving a structural change in the labor market and highlights its "better resilience" compared to other sectors, being the only one that grows in employment both in times of economic expansion and crisis.

The Barcelona Chamber of Commerce points out that Covid-19 has accelerated a transformation that was already being observed since 2014, with a greater weight of ICT activities and more professional profiles from this sector and others such as health and sciences. For this reason, it argues that, with a medium-term perspective, the unequal impact of crises on the labor market "must emphasize the need to accelerate this change towards occupations linked to technology, health, sciences and high value-added industry, and promote the professionalization and digitalization of services."