The size and trends of the EU data economy

The European Commission published the final results of the European Data Market study. The study presents the findings of the monitoring tool on data workers, companies, users and markets among others. The findings will feed into further developing the Digital Single Market in the EU as data is a catalyst for economic growth, innovation and digitisation across all economic sectors, particularly for SMEs and start-ups.

The Commission put in place a monitoring tool to measure the size and trends of the EU data economy as part of the European Data Market study, with the objective of measuring the socio-economic impact of data. The monitoring tool provides a first assessment of the emerging data market in Europe.

The study has found that 6 million people in Europe worked in data-related jobs in 2015 and 6.16 million in 2016. As far as medium-term developments are concerned, it is estimated that under a high-growth scenario, the number of data workers in Europe will increase up to 10.43 million, with a compound average growth rate of 14.1% 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, corresponding to 6.2% of the total demand of the skilled data professionals. By 2020, the EU is forecasted to face a data skills gap corresponding to 769,000 unfilled positions in the baseline scenario and being concentrated in particular in the large Member States (especially Germany and France).

The data industry as a whole comprised approximately of 255,000 data companies in 2016 in the EU. According to the high growth scenario forecast, this figure will increase to 359,050 by 2020 with a compound annual growth rate of 8.9%.

Click here to read more about the study and to access the study.