Our figure of the month 11/2017: Regional distribution of ICT sections in 2016
The transition to an economy 4.0, which makes use of the prospects of digitisation, results in perceptible changes within the business cycle. Joint studies of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) in Nuremberg, the Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) in Bonn and the Institute of Economic Structures Research (GWS) in Osnabrück have shown that due to changes induced by digitisation, many employees have to re-orientate themselves with respect to their occupation and economic section they are working in. As a result of the envisaged changes, around 1.5 million jobs will be dissolved and about the same number of jobs will evolve.
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The transition will not only bring forth changes amongst professions and economic sections. The information and communication technology (ICT) section will be one of the areas where many new jobs will be created[1]. However, the regional distribution of ICT companies in Germany is very diverse. Based on data from the Federal Employment Agency (BA), the map below indicates the share of workforce employed in the ICT section in each district or town in 2016. While the share of workforce in ICT is already high in bigger towns and city states, this share is still quite low in rural areas. The Rhein-Neckar-Kreis is an exception due to the fact that the DAX enterprise SAP has its headquarters in this district.
The transition of an economy 4.0 thus has the potential to also affect the regional distribution of jobs. If the regional focus of the ICT section on towns will not change, many new jobs will be created in these towns or urban areas.
[1] Wolter, M. I., Mönnig, A., Hummel, M., Weber, E., Zika, G., Helmrich, R., Maier, T. [&] Neuber-Pohl, C. (2016): Wirtschaft 4.0 und die Folgen für Arbeitsmarkt und Ökonomie. Szenario-Rechnungen im Rahmen der BIBB-IAB-Qualifikations- und Berufsfeldprojektionen. IAB-Forschungsbericht, 13/2016, Nürnberg.
Other figures can be found here.