Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union

G4: Innovation and digitalisation

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The ICT education statistics are part of the ICT training domain, which is one of the domains covered in the wider concept of Digital skills.

ICT education indicators are constructed using the secondary statistics approach. This approach has a virtue of ensuring cost-efficient and high-quality data production. Nonetheless, at the same time, it has limited options for designing new indicators, as well as for controlling over data quality and data release timing. ICT education indicators are based on the EU Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) microdata. 

ICT education statistics present data on the number of persons in employment who have reached a certain attainment level of education (highest level of education successfully completed) in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) level.

ICT education indicators are presented in four tables:

1. Employed and unemployed persons with ICT education (isoc_ski_itemp)
2. Employed persons with ICT education by sex (isoc_ski_itsex)
3. Employed persons with ICT education by educational attainment level (isoc_ski_itedu)
4. Employed persons with ICT education by age (isoc_ski_itage)

The first table (isoc_ski_itemp) describes persons with ICT education in labour force by their employment status. The remaining tables (isoc_ski_itsex, isoc_ski_itedu and isoc_ski_itage) present different breakdowns of the persons with an ICT education in employment.

Each indicator is presented in the country/year dimensions and is measured in absolute (in 1000s) and relative (%) terms.

Data cover all years starting from 2004 until the latest year available. Following the release practice of the EU-LFS, the publication year is calculated as (t+1), with t being the reference year. Yearly data release for all indicators depends on EU-LFS release practice and normally takes place in October of each year.

Following the underlying EU-LFS microdata, the ICT education indicators set the lower bound on age at 15 years and the upper age bound at 74 years.

ICT education indicators are based on the international classification system used by the relevant EU-LFS microdata, the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED). The ISCED, developed by the UNESCO, is used to measure the level and the field of completed and current education. The classification was last revised in 2011.

For the Fields of education and training, the ISCED 1997 was applied to data up to 2015 (see the fields description in the 1999 Manual on fields of education and training), and ISCED-F 2013 classification of fields of education and training was used from 2016 onwards.

For the Level of educational attainment, the ISCED 1997 was used until 2013 and the latest version ISCED 2011 is used from 2014 onwards.

With the introduction of IESS in 2021, data could be back calculated only until year 2016. Data in earlier years were filtered with the old version of the classification.

Data on persons with an ICT education do not use the concept of sectors of economic activities. Persons with an ICT education can be employed in any sector or be unemployed. 

ICT education is defined in terms of the ISCED (International Standard Classification of Education) Fields of education and training. To this end, the field of the highest educational attainment level reported by a respondent of the EU-LFS is used. Statistical definition of ICT education in the two versions of ISCED that applied to years coverd by the ICT education data time series are presented in the table below. The table reported below is represented in accordance to the mapping between the two versions of the classification by fields of education.

The educational attainment level of an individual is the highest ISCED level successfully completed, the successful completion of an educational programme being validated by a recognised qualification, i.e. a qualification officially recognised by the relevant national education authorities or recognised as equivalent to another qualification of formal education. In countries where education programmes do not lead to a qualification, the criterion of full attendance in the programme (and normally giving access to a higher level of education) may have to be used instead. When determining the highest level, both general and vocational education should be taken into consideration. The ISCED definition of education includes training. Data on educational attainment level exclude persons who did not answer to the question 'highest level of education or training successfully completed'. For more information, including the detailed list of levels of educational attainment, please consult the reference metadata Educational attainment level and transition from education to work (based on EU-LFS).

Levels of educational attainment for ICT education indicators are defined in terms of the ISCED classification, and include two dimensions: Tertiary education (ISCED levels 5 to 8) and Non-tertiary education (ISCED levels 3 and 4). Diplomas in the field of ICT are not delivered in lower secondary education levels (ISCED levels 1 and 2). The comparability of the data over time is ascertained, the impact of the revision of the ISCED classification from reference year 2014 onwards being negligible (see Section 15.2 for more details).

Employment: Persons in employment or 'Employed persons' comprise persons aged 15 years to 74 (for the derived statistics on ICT Specialists) who, during the week of reference, were in one of the following categories:

(a) persons who worked for at least one hour for pay or profit, including contributing family workers;

(b) persons who were not at work but had a job or business with a strong attachment from which they were temporarily absent: holidyas, sick leave, maternity/paternity leave, training, parental leave, seasonnal workers, other types of absences which expected duration is 3 months or less.

This definition is applicable to employees, self-employed persons and family workers. Pay includes cash payments or 'payment in kind' (payment in goods or services rather than money), whether payment was received in the week the work was done or not. Exceptions to the standard lower bound of the age group (15 years) are applied in some countries: consult the EU Labour Force Survey - New Methodology from 2021 onwards. The upper bound of the age group for the ICT education indicators is set at 74 years.

Unemployed persons comprise persons aged 15 to 74 years who were: (a) not employed according to the definition of employment above; (b) currently available for work, i.e. were available for paid employment or self-employment before the end of the 2 weeks following the reference week; (c) actively seeking work, i.e. had either carried out activities in the four-week period ending with the reference week to seek paid employment or self-employment or found a job to start within a period of at most 3 months from the end of the reference week.

The active population (also called labour force) is defined as the population employed or unemployed. Persons in the labour force are persons who were either employed or unemployed during the reference week. This aggregate includes all persons offering their work capacity on the labour market: the supply side of the market. It is used as a denominator for calculating the shares of employed persons with ICT education in table isoc_ski_itemp.

EU-LFS data records, representative for the persons in employment aged 15-74, have been broken down into two age classes (table isoc_ski_itage): from 15 to 34 years old and from 35 to 74 years old.

Persons aged from 15 to 74 years old living in private households.

The EU-LFS survey covers all persons living in households usually residing in Member states, in EFTA or candidate countries. Persons living in collective or institutional households are excluded. The EU-LFS covers all industries and occupations. For constructing the ICT education indicators, coverage is restricted to persons in the age group of 15-74.

For more details and exceptions regarding the lower age bound, please consult the EU-LFS Methodology.

Please note that the EU-LFS covers the resident population, so that the figures reported for a country include residents working abroad and excludes foreign residents working in the country. This can make a sizeable difference in particular in small countries with relatively many cross-border workers, such as Luxembourg.

Following the EU-LFS data publication practice, ICT education indicators cover the EU Member States, the United Kingdom until 2019, EFTA countries, and candidate countries for which data are available.

For the case of Cyprus, data refer only to the territory controlled by the Government of the Republic of Cyprus. Data for France include also the French overseas departments (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Guyane, La Réunion), with the exception of Mayotte.

Annual time series are available from 2016 onwards. The lower bound of the timeframe is determined by the availability of data on the field of education based on the ISCED for the majority of countries.

Not applicable.

The mandate to produce ICT education statistics has been based on the "Memorandum of Understanding" between Eurostat and the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content & Technology (DG CNECT) ruling the data requirements outlined in the Monitoring Framework for the Digital Economy and Society (2016-2021).

More technically, source data on ICT education are based on European legislation since 1973. The principal legal acts, currently in force, are the Regulation (EU) 2019/1700 establishing a common framework for European social statistics, the Commission Delegated Regulation (EU) 2020/256 establishing a multiannual rolling planning, the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2181 regarding items common to several datasets, and the Commission Implementing Regulation (EU) 2019/2240 which specifies the implementation rules, technical items and contents of the EU-LFS. More details on these regulations are available in the publication EU-LFS (Statistics Explained) - Main features and legal basis.

Not applicable.

Regulation (EC) No 223/2009 on European statistics (recital 24 and Article 20(4)) of 11 March 2009 (OJ L.87, p. 164), stipulates the need to establish common principles and guidelines ensuring the confidentiality of data used for the production of European statistics and the access to those confidential data with due account for technical developments and the requirements of users in a democratic society.

Confidentiality flags are provided by the Eurostat LFS team, which performs the confidentiality controls following their standard procedure. For further information see EU labour force survey – data and publication.

Data is released annually in autumn, following the EU-LFS release practice.

Consult the EU-LFS release calendar for 2023-2024.

In line with the Community legal framework and the European Statistics Code of Practice Eurostat disseminates European statistics on Eurostat's website (see item 10. Accessibility and clarity) respecting professional independence and in an objective, professional and transparent manner in which all users are treated equitably. The detailed arrangements are governed by the Eurostat protocol on impartial access to Eurostat data for users.

Annual news releases via Eurostat website.

The results are disseminated in Statistics Explained articles and other publications of the European Commission.

Please consult free data on-line Eurobase navigation tree and the bulk download.

Not applicable.

None.

For a detailed description of methods and concepts of the primary data, please consult the EU-LFS webpage, the article describing the methodology up to the 2020 EU survey and the related metadata files: Employment and Unemployment (employ_esms), LFS series - detailed annual survey results (lfsa), Population by educational attainment level (edat1)and Participation in education and training (based on EU-LFS).

Quality control of the primary data is ensured by the corresponding EU-LFS procedures. More information on quality is documented in the EU-LFS webpage.

Quality assurance relies heavily on the corresponding EU-LFS quality control practices.

Good quality is achieved due to the rigorous quality checks performed on the primary EU-LFS data.

Digitalisation and automation can generate new business opportunities through the development of new production processes, new products and new markets. This may drive the demand for new skills in the workplace, which in turn leads to changes in education systems which may have to adapt to technological changes in order to provide students with up-to-date training and education that meets the requirements of prospective employers.

However, until the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of digitalisation on education and training was much more limited. The pandemic has demonstrated that having an education and training system, which is fit for the digital age, is essential. Many people will need to acquire new skills and move to new jobs in a different sector of economy. More will need to upskill to keep their job in a new work environment.

One of the main political priorities of the European Commission is empowering EU’s citizens and businesses to seize a human centred, sustainable and more prosperous digital future: ‘A Europe fit for the Digital Age’. EUs digital ambitions for 2030 are translated into specific targets and milestones, delineated by the ‘2030 Digital Compass: the European way for the Digital Decade’.

The renewed Digital Education Plan and the updated Industrial Strategy for Europe made clear that the pathways to the recovery will be supporting the creation of a greener, more digital and resilient European Union in which the skills of the labour force are adapted to cope with a fast changing labour market.

The main user of the digital skills indicators is DG CNECT, followed by DG EMPL, DG JRC and DG EAC.

Eurostat does not carry out satisfaction survey targeted at users of ICT education statistics.

User satisfaction is assessed via well-established contacts with DG CNECT and DG JRC. The main quality aspects valued by users are reliability, accessibility, clarity, comparability and relevance.

Completeness of variables and breakdowns is considered as satisfactory.

In general, good accuracy and reliability of the results are ensured by the source data collection practices of the EU-LFS.

For more details on overall accuracy, see the reference metadata files: Employment and Unemployment (employ_esms), LFS series - detailed annual survey results (lfsa), Population by educational attainment level (edat1) and Participation in education and training (based on EU-LFS).

Not applicable.

Not applicable.

Timeliness of data publication depends on the primary source data release practice. Annual averages of reference year t in EU-LFS are usually published by the end of April (t+1).

Data on ICT education are published together with the source data. The deadline for the source data public releases follows the rules of the EU-LFS team of Eurostat.

Geographical comparability is defined by the EU-LFS and is considered as high (see the reference metadata Employment and Unemployment (employ_esms) or the article on LFS methodology for more information). 

Comparability over time has been impacted by the break in series introduced with the new version of the International Standard Classification of Education (ISCED) and the age filter (appllied to the variable that describes the field of education).

The introduction of the ISCED 2011 affected EU-LFS data from 2014 onwards. Data until 2013 are based on ISCED 1997, as from 2014 ISCED 2011 is applied. However, the impact of this change on ICT education statistics is minimal due to the applied aggregation approach: data are broken down into two educational attainment level groups, (1) Upper secondary and post-secondary non-tertiary education (corresponding to ISCED levels 3 and 4) and (2) Tertiary education (ISCED levels 5-8), which means that coding changes occurred within these two groups.At this level of aggregation data are directly comparable for all available countries except Austria. The level shift break in Austria is due to the reclassification of a programme spanning levels: the qualification acquired upon successful completion of higher technical and vocational colleges is allocated in ISCED 2011 to ISCED level 5; under ISCED 1997 the same qualification was reported on ISCED level 4, but earmarked as equivalent to tertiary education.

The introduction of the ISCED-F 2013 affected EU-LFS data from 2016 onwards. This change had no impact on the ICT education indicators due to the perfect correspondence between the fields of education codes in the two classifications (see above in § 3.4).

In data from 2014 onwards, an age filter was introduced for the variable that describes the field of education: the field of education is reported only for respondents who completed their highest education attainment either before they reached 34 years of age or within the 15 years preceeding the survey year. This change, however, has only marginal effect on the ICT education data, except for the table Employed persons with ICT education by age (isoc_ski_itage). A flag 'b' marks 2014 observations in all ICT education tables. 

ICT education statistics are coherent with EU-LFS indicators in their breakdowns and primary sources.

Internal coherence between ICT education indicators is ensured by the same definition, estimation method and source microdata.

All data disseminated consist of data constructed with data issued from the Labour Force survey (LFS).  The revision policy is therefore effectively the revision policy of this domain (see Related metadata).

No specific data revisions are made for secondary statistics on ICT specialists, the exception being an error occurred at secondary level only.

The revision practice effectively corresponds to the revision practice of the LFS domain mentioned under sub‑concept 17.1 (Data revision – policy).

ICT specialists' indicators are final upon release. The complete time series are updated once per year with the autumn EU-LFS data release (consult the EU-LFS release calendar). 

Source microdata come from EU-LFS. Microdata are extracted using the Eurostat EU-LFS data extraction tool.
Extraction procedure is calibrated on the statistical definitions described in Section 3.4.
More information about source data can be consulted in the EU-LFS reference metadata files (Employment and Unemployment (employ_esms), LFS series - detailed annual survey results (lfsa), Educational attainment level and transition from education to work (based on EU-LFS) and Participation in education and training (based on EU-LFS)) or in the article describing the methodology from 2021 survey edition onwards.

While primary microdata are collected quarterly, published annual aggregates are released in spring.

Data are retrieved from the EU-LFS Survey.

Secondary data are validated using comparisons with previous years and cross-countries variations. If atypical behaviour of the variables is discovered, it is reported back to the LFS team of Eurostat.
If needed, countries are then contacted for complementary information. If a country-year indicator is considered unreliable according to the rules applicable LFS data, data are flagged with the flag 'u'.

More information on primary data validation can be found in the EU-LFS metadata (Employment and Unemployment (employ_esms), LFS series - detailed annual survey results (lfsa), Educational attainment level and transition from education to work (based on EU-LFS) and Participation in education and training (based on EU-LFS)), and in the article describing the EU-LFS methodology.

Primary data are re-arranged to produce secondary statistics indicators as described in Sections 3.1 and 3.4.

Not applicable.