IT employment passed the million mark last year, but telcos, hardware are squeezed this year German IT trade association Bitkom predicts 20,000 new jobs in the ICT sector in 2016, but they will be mainly in software and service provision. By the end of the year there will be just over 1 million IT people in the country according to the association. "Our industry employs far more people in Germany than the automotive and the chemical industries," says Bitkom President Thorsten Dirks (below). For hardware companies and telecommunications companies, however, shrinkage is expected.
In the last five years, ICT companies have created a total of 136,000 new jobs. However, at the same time Thorsten Dirks pointed out that there are currently 40,000 vacancies for IT professionals.
The workforce for hardware manufacturers is expected to decline by 1000 to 23,000. For telecommunications companies are even more - 4000 job losses, suggesting a number of employees around 195,000. In consumer electronics Bitkom expects a slight decline to around 9000 employees. The landmark million employees was passed last year, it says using available data from the Federal Employment Agency and the Federal Network Agency and its own calculations.