Statistics Estonia’s short-term labour market statistics show that over the past year and a half, there have been fewer young people aged 20–29 working in both the broader information and communication sector and the more specific field of computer programming. While in previous years the field of computer programming was growing mainly because of young people, in the past year their numbers have fallen.
During the past decade, the information and communication sector has been an exemplary performer on the Estonian labour market, with the highest wages, growth in the number of employees even in the midst of crises, the largest shortage of skilled labour and the highest growth ambitions, according to employers.
However, employment register data reveal that the number of employment relationships in the information and communication sector has fallen significantly over the last year and a half. As at June 2024, there are around 36,000 employees registered in this sector. More than half of them (22,000) are registered under computer programming, consultancy and related activities. The largest number of new jobs created in the information and communication sector in 2019–2023 was in computer programming, consultancy and related activities – 7,700. However, over the past year, 600 of these jobs have disappeared. The other sectors have seen smaller changes, but there has been a decline in almost all of them over the past year.
Young programmers replaced by middle-aged ones
Kadri Rootalu, a data scientist at Statistics Estonia, said that the biggest changes in the field of computer programming have been among young people. “While in the past, the number of jobs in computer programming was growing because of younger workers, this growth has slowed down over the past year and the number of young employees in the 20–29 age group has decreased in this field,” Rootalu noted. For instance, in June 2022, there were 6,130 young people aged 20–29 active in the computer programming activities. By the end of June 2024, the number of young workers had fallen to 5,070. However, the number of employees aged 40 and over in this field has increased. In 2022, there were 5,720 people aged between 40 and 69 years working in the programming sector, rising to 6,880 in June this year.
Young professionals are leaving
In the activity of computer programming, it is the number of young professionals (e.g. software developers, application programmers, system analysts and administrators, etc.) that has decreased the most. In June 2023, there were 3,920 young people employed as professionals in computer programming, whereas only 3,370 people aged 20–29 were working as professionals in this field in June 2024. In the other age groups, the drop in the number of professionals has been smaller, and their number has increased in the 40–59 age group.
What is behind the change?
According to Kadri Rootalu, a data scientist at Statistics Estonia, the decline in the share of young people in information and communication and computer programming is partly in line with the change in the composition of the population. In 2019, the number of 20–29-year-old inhabitants of Estonia was 153,000, but it had dropped to 136,000 by 1 January 2024. In the 40–49 age group, however, the number of people has increased by more than 10,000 over these years. “We can assume that young people who started in the field of computer programming in earlier years have simply got older,” Rootalu said. However, the question of why the number of young employees in programming activities has fallen specifically in the last two years, when the proportion of young people in the population in general has been in decline for quite some time, remains unanswered. “There is nothing that stands out about those who have left the world of computer programming other than the fact that they are young people. Around two thirds of them are citizens of Estonia and half of them have a higher education degree,” Rootalu added.
