The IT sector hasn’t suffered much from COVID-19. At least, that is what many people think. But what is really happening in the market after a year of economic blows caused by the pandemic?
Now that the first pandemic year is behind us, the economic damage caused by COVID-19 is becoming clear. In this first blog, we will discuss the economic impact of the corona crisis on the IT labour market.
Impact on the IT labour market
Ability to provide services and products partly online is essential for organizations to survive. The corona era has made this even more evident. Therefore, according to the recent research of UWV the IT job market has only suffered “a small shrinkage”.
23% of the participants in the NLdigital survey stated that the corona crisis has negatively impacted the number of people they employ. Only 10% expect to hire more people in the coming year. About 25% of IT companies have terminated temporary contracts and 12% are planning to do so. On the other hand, the vast majority think that COVID-19 will have almost no impact on employment (68%).
Vacancy trends
The number of vacancies is a good indicator of IT employment. Before the lockdown in March 2020, there was an average of 10,990 unfilled IT vacancies per week. Shortly afterwards, this number dropped by 15 percent to 9,330 per week. However, according to the figures from the UWV and werk.nl, this trend did not last for long, and since April 2020, the number of vacancies has been growing again. What is the main reason for this turnaround? According to the UWV, it is the increasing demand for online services, such as a digital workplace, video calling and cloud platforms for remote working.
What are the hottest IT jobs?
Since the corona crisis, there has been a noticeable increase in demand for Software Developers. The number of vacancies for this position has increased by 16 percent since April 2020. Another hot category is data specialists. The demand for Data Managers and Data Engineers increased by 58 and 53 percent respectively in March 2020 compared to March 2019. The number of IT Product Owner and IT Project Leader vacancies have also increased by 17 and 12 percent respectively.
This increase can be easily explained, as companies that can offer their services and products online have an undeniable competitive advantage – especially in times of new pandemic reality.
