INFOGRAPHIC: Digital skills in Europe

SPECIAL REPORT / Most jobs today require some digital and ICT skills. Jobseekers will have a harder time finding work without them.

The European Commission tracks several indicators to measure the level of ICT skills in the population, such as:

• Basic digital skills
• Internet users with advanced digital skills
• Individuals who have obtained ICT skills through formal educational institutions
• People who have created a web page
• People having written a computer programme

Basic digital skills

40% of the EU population is considered as having insufficient digital skills. 22% have none at all, meaning they did not use the internet.

The population lacking digital skills goes down to 32% for those in employment. 13% of the EU labour force had no digital skills at all.

Advanced digital skills

Among regular internet users, Denmark is the country with the highest level of digital skills (20.8% of internet users). Bottom is Romania, with 2.01% of internet users.

Greece (8.27%), Belgium (7.87%), France (7.78%) and the United Kingdom (7.35%) are middle of the ranking. Meanwhile, Germany (4.73%), Italy (4.22%) and Poland (3.32%) are next to last.

Education in ICT

27.6% of the EU population report having obtained some ICT skills through formal educational institutions, at school, college or university.

The highest percentage is found in Sweden (40%), Finland (38.7%), Slovakia (38.6%) and the United Kingdom (37.6%). The lowest are in Spain (20.5%), Bulgaria (19.7%), Romania (16.9%), and Italy (16.1%)

Creating a web page

Among internet users, 9.81% of the EU population report having created a webpage at least once in their life.

The highest percentage is found in Finland (21.8%), Denmark (20.1%), Sweden (18.5%) and the Netherlands (16.5%). The lowest are in the Poland (5.90%), Bulgaria (5.81%), Romania (4.70%) and Cyprus (1.07%).

Writing a computer programme

Among regular computers users, 10.6% of the EU population say they have written a computer programme using specialised programming language. This refers to high-level computer languages such as BASIC, Pascal or for instance SAS programming, which might only be familiar to programmers, system analysts and so forth.

The highest percentage is found in Sweden (22.5%), Luxembourg (15.1%), Spain (14.2%) and the United Kingdom (14.1%). The lowest are in Latvia (4.72%), Bulgaria (4.51%), the Czech Republic (4.42%) and Romania (3.97%).