IT services sit inside a larger digital economy that spans software, telecommunications, hosting, consulting, outsourcing and cloud delivery. The statistics below distinguish sector measures from occupation measures, and observed values from survey results and derived growth rates.
Key IT Services Industry Statistics
These highlights span the industry’s economic scale, workforce, business adoption and cross-border activity:
- In 2023, EU ICT services contributed more than €697 billion of value added to the EU economy.
- In 2023, EU ICT services employed more than 6.8 million people.
- In 2023, ICT accounted for 3.38% of total EU employment.
- From 2022 to 2023, EU ICT-sector value added grew 3% in absolute monetary terms.
- In 2023, computer programming, consultancy and related activities represented 61.1% of EU ICT-sector employment.
- In 2023, EU ICT-sector apparent labour productivity was nearly €111,000 per person employed.
- In 2022, U.S. digital-economy real value added grew 6.3%.
- From 2017 to 2022, U.S. cloud-services value added grew 232.1% cumulatively.
- In 2022, software represented 24% of U.S. digital-economy value added.
- In 2023, 9.8 million people worked as ICT specialists in the EU.
- In 2023, ICT specialists represented 4.8% of total EU employment.
- In 2023, women represented 19.4% of EU ICT specialists.
- In 2023, 71.92% of EU enterprises outsourced ICT functions.
- In 2023, 45.2% of EU enterprises purchased cloud-computing services.
- In 2023, 78.3% of Finnish enterprises purchased cloud services.
- In 2023, U.S. ICT-services exports were $96.5 billion.
- In 2023, U.S. digitally deliverable-services exports were $655.5 billion.
Contents
- Economic scale and value added
- Employment and workforce structure
- Digital economy growth and output
- Skills, hiring and training
- Outsourcing and cloud-service adoption
IT Services Industry Statistics: Economic Scale and Value Added
Eurostat’s 2023 measures place ICT services at more than €697 billion of EU value added, while the broader ICT sector exceeded €816 billion. ICT services are a subsector of ICT, so these figures should not be treated as the same population.
The same Eurostat release measured ICT services at 4.47% of EU gross value added, a GVA share rather than an industry-revenue share. ICT manufacturing contributed nearly €120 billion and represented 0.77% of EU GVA in 2023.
Source: ICT sector – value added, employment and R&D.
Country-level ICT-sector shares show how uneven the sector’s economic weight can be across the EU. These are full ICT-sector measures, including manufacturing and services:
| Geography | ICT-sector share of national GVA | Period and scope |
|---|---|---|
| Ireland | 30.9% | 2023; full ICT sector |
| Malta | 11.7% | 2023; full ICT sector |
| Bulgaria | 8.1% | 2023; full ICT sector |
| Latvia | 6.6% | 2023; full ICT sector |
EU ICT-sector value added grew 3% in absolute monetary terms from 2022 to 2023, although the sector’s share of GVA declined. That combination means absolute expansion and relative economic share can move differently in the same period.
IT Services Industry Data: Employment and Workforce Structure
EU ICT services employed more than 6.8 million people in 2023, while the broader ICT sector employed more than 7.36 million. ICT accounted for 3.38% of total EU employment, and ICT manufacturing alone employed more than 0.5 million people.
Eurostat reported that ICT employment’s share of total EU employment increased 0.39 percentage points from 2019 to 2023. The ICT-services employment share increased 0.41 percentage points over the same period.
Within the EU ICT sector, computer programming, consultancy and related activities accounted for 61.1% of employment in 2023. Telecommunications represented 10.9%, while software publishing, data processing and hosting, web portals and computer repair together represented 13%.
Source: ICT sector – value added, employment and R&D.
The sector’s apparent labour productivity was nearly €111,000 per person employed in 2023. This measure equals value added per person employed and should not be read as an individual wage or as a measure limited to software developers.
IT Services Industry Trends: Digital Economy Growth and Output
The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis measured the digital economy as a defined aggregate rather than as the entire IT-services industry. Its real value added grew 6.3% in 2022, compared with 1.9% growth in total U.S. real GDP.
In 2020, U.S. digital-economy real value added grew 6.5% while total real GDP declined 2.2%. Real value added removes price effects, so these growth rates describe changes after adjusting for prices.
Source: U.S. Digital Economy: New and Revised Estimates, 2017–2022.
The 2022 composition of U.S. digital-economy value added included software at 24%, telecommunication services at 18% and business-to-business e-commerce at 16%. These are digital-economy activity shares, not direct shares of IT-services revenue.
Cloud services were a particularly fast-growing component in the BEA series. U.S. cloud-services value added grew 232.1% from 2017 to 2022, with a reported average annual growth rate of 27.2%; the annual rate is a derived BEA-reported measure, not a forecast.
| U.S. digital-economy measure | Value or growth | Period |
|---|---|---|
| Information-sector digital-economy value added | $717 billion to $1.024 trillion | 2017 to 2022; current dollars |
| Information-sector digital-economy value added | 7.5% average annual growth | 2017–2022; reported rate |
| Digital-economy real gross output | 7.1% annual growth | 2022; gross output includes intermediate sales |
IT Services Industry Statistics: Skills, Hiring and Training
Occupation-based ICT-specialist data describes people doing ICT work across the economy, not only employees of ICT-sector firms. Eurostat counted 9.8 million ICT specialists in the EU in 2023, equal to 4.8% of total EU employment.
The ICT-specialist share rose 1.5 percentage points from 2013 to 2023. Sweden had the highest reported share among EU countries at 8.7% in 2023, while Greece recorded 2.4%.
Source: More people employed in ICT in the EU in 2023.
Women represented 19.4% of EU ICT specialists in 2023. Their share increased 2.7 percentage points from 2013 to 2023, but this measure covers ICT specialists rather than all workers in IT services.
Enterprise surveys show the organizational demand behind those skills. In 2023, 9.55% of EU enterprises reported recruiting or trying to recruit ICT specialists for the prior year; the 2024 survey asked about recruitment during calendar year 2023.
Training also varied sharply by enterprise size:
- 22.29% of EU enterprises provided ICT-related training to all staff in 2023.
- 72.62% of large EU enterprises provided ICT training to all staff in 2023. Large means 250 or more persons employed.
- 17.21% of small EU enterprises provided ICT training to all staff in 2023.
The enterprise survey generally covers firms with at least 10 employees or self-employed persons. Small-enterprise and large-enterprise results retain Eurostat’s survey size-class definitions.
Source: ICT specialists – statistics on hard-to-fill vacancies in enterprises.
IT Services Industry Adoption Data: Outsourcing and Cloud Services
Outsourcing is widespread in the EU enterprise survey: 71.92% of enterprises reported outsourcing ICT functions in 2023. The result was 83.29% among large enterprises and 70.19% among small enterprises.
At the same time, 39.52% of EU enterprises performed ICT functions with their own employees. Eurostat notes that internal and external performance categories are not necessarily mutually exclusive, so the percentages should not be added or interpreted as a single split.
Source: ICT specialists – statistics on hard-to-fill vacancies in enterprises.
Cloud purchasing provides another view of IT-services adoption. In 2023, 45.2% of EU enterprises purchased cloud-computing services, up 4.2 percentage points from 2021 to 2023; breaks in series affect France and Sweden.
| Geography | Enterprises purchasing cloud services | Period and survey scope |
|---|---|---|
| EU | 45.2% | 2023; generally enterprises with at least 10 employees or self-employed persons in specified NACE sections |
| Finland | 78.3% | 2023; same coverage |
| Bulgaria | 17.5% | 2023; same coverage |
Source: 45% EU enterprises bought cloud services in 2023.
International trade shows the external reach of related services. BEA recorded U.S. ICT-services exports of $96.5 billion and imports of $67.0 billion in 2023, producing a $29.5 billion ICT-services trade surplus; the surplus is the difference between the reported figures.
The broader digitally deliverable-services category recorded U.S. exports of $655.5 billion and imports of $388.8 billion in 2023, for a $266.8 billion surplus. BEA describes digitally deliverable services as a broader proxy for services that can predominantly be delivered remotely over ICT networks and states that actual delivery mode cannot be identified precisely.