ICT specialist supply in the EU: what Eurostat data shows

When a buyer considers a nearshore testing team in the European Union, two questions come up early. Is there enough skilled capacity in the country the vendor proposes? And will the vendor be able to keep the team staffed once the contract starts? Eurostat publishes two data sets that help frame both questions: ICT specialists in employment, and enterprises reporting hard-to-fill ICT vacancies. Neither measures testers specifically, and neither gives a price. Used carefully, they help you ask better questions about staffing and continuity.

Who counts as an ICT specialist

Eurostat uses a broad definition: workers who have the ability to develop, operate and maintain ICT systems, and for whom ICT constitutes the main part of their job. Software testers fall inside that group, together with developers, administrators, network engineers and other technical roles. Any figure below is therefore about the wider technical labour pool that a testing vendor recruits from, not about testers alone.

How large the pool is

According to the Statistics Explained article on ICT specialists in employment (data extracted April 2026):

• In 2025, more than 10 million persons were employed as ICT specialists across the EU.
• Germany had the largest number (2.3 million, 22.2% of the EU total), followed by France (1.4 million, 13.7%), then Spain and Italy (just over 1 million and 0.9 million).
• ICT specialists were 5.0% of total EU employment in 2025, up from 3.5% in 2015.
• Sweden had the highest share of its workforce in ICT specialist roles (8.9%), followed by Luxembourg (8.7%) and Finland (7.8%). The lowest shares were in Greece (2.5%) and Romania (2.7%).
• From 2015 to 2025 the number of ICT specialists grew by 59.4%, against 9.8% for total employment. Annual growth slowed to 2.6% between 2024 and 2025.
• In 2025, 68.8% of ICT specialists had completed tertiary education, and 80.5% were men.

How hard they are to hire

The companion article on hard-to-fill vacancies (data extracted June 2025) looks at the enterprise side:

• In 2024, 20.05% of EU enterprises employed ICT specialists.
• 9.55% of EU enterprises reported that during 2023 they recruited or tried to recruit ICT specialists, and 57.5% of those had difficulty filling the vacancies.
• The difficulty rate was above 70% in Germany (72.41%) and Czechia (70.47%).
• Large enterprises were far more likely to recruit: 51.87% of large enterprises recruited or tried to recruit ICT specialists in 2023, against 6.23% of small ones.

These are survey results about all enterprises in the economy, not about testing vendors. They describe the competition for the same people your vendor wants to hire and keep.

What the data does and does not tell a buyer

It tells you about depth and competition. A country with a small ICT share of employment and a high rate of hard-to-fill vacancies is one where a vendor may take longer to replace a leaver or to scale a team. That is a continuity risk you can test in the selection.

It does not tell you about testing skills. The definition covers every technical role. A large ICT pool does not mean a deep pool of performance, security or accessibility testers, or of testers with your domain knowledge.

It does not tell you about price. Nothing in these articles is a rate or a salary. Do not infer that a country with more ICT specialists will be cheaper, or that a tight market will be more expensive; ask for the rates and compare them on the same scope.

It does not tell you about one vendor. A national shortage can coexist with a vendor that retains staff well, and a deep national pool can coexist with a vendor that churns. The figures set the context; the vendor's own evidence decides.

It is dated. The employment data is for 2025 and the vacancy data refers to recruitment during 2023. Note the reference year next to any figure you reuse, and check for the planned updates Eurostat lists on each article.

Questions to put to a nearshore vendor

The labour-market context turns into concrete questions during the selection:

• How many of the proposed team are permanent employees, and how many are subcontractors or freelancers?
• What was voluntary attrition among testers in the delivery location over the last 12 months, and how is it calculated?
• How long did it take, on average, to fill a tester vacancy on an existing account last year?
• Which named people are key personnel, and what notice and replacement terms apply if one leaves?
• If the team needs to grow, from which locations would the extra people come, and would that change time-zone overlap or data-transfer arrangements?

What this means for your selection

Treat Eurostat data as background that tells you where staffing and continuity questions deserve more weight, not as a verdict on any country or vendor. Put the questions above into your questionnaire and your RFP, check the answers during due diligence, and write key-personnel and replacement terms into the contract. The guides on nearshore time-zone overlap, how QA vendors staff projects and knowledge transfer when switching vendors cover the operating side of the same risk.