The Lightcast Digital Skills Outlook 2024

What are the top digital skills being requested by employers? Which are growing fastest? And perhaps most pertinent to understanding future skills, which ones are emerging? In the charts below, we bring data to bear on all these questions across the 15 labour markets. Key takeaways include:

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The most in-demand digital skill across all 15 countries is Microsoft Office, followed by Microsoft Excel and SAP applications. The country with the highest percentage of job adverts mentioning Microsoft Office is Germany at 15.72%.

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Across the 15 countries, the fastest growing digital skill is search engine marketing, which grew by 255% in 2023. This is followed by Microsoft 365 (195% growth), and digital literacy (184%).

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Among the emerging skills across the 15 countries are a number that we've heard so much about in the last year or so, such as Metaverse (7,137%) and Generative Artificial Intelligence (6,477%).

In this section we go beyond countries to look at digital skills demand at the city level (we've picked the top metropolitan areas in each country with populations above 150,000). First, there's a chart plotting the percentage of total job postings mentioning digital skills. Secondly, there's a map giving details about the Location Quotient – or relative concentration – of digital skills in each city. For an explanation of Location Quotient, check out the City Hotspots section in Methodology, Data and Tools. Points of interest from the chart include:

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Germany sits at the top, with 57.04% and 55.77% of job postings in Munich and Frankfurt mentioning digital skills, while the UK is at the bottom, with London on just 34.75%.

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Some of these variations may be explained by local, cultural reasons. For instance, German employers, unlike in the UK, are legally obliged to mention qualifications for most jobs.

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There are interesting in-country variations. In Austria, for example, we see a big variation between Vienna (52.03%), and Linz, Graz and Salzburg, which are all under 40%.

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By contrast in Italy, the variation is much smaller, with Milan, Rome, Turin, Naples and Palermo all having a share of postings mentioning digital skills within a 38-42% range.

The section below looks at demand for digital skills across five occupations: Applications Programmers, Systems Analysts, Web Developers, Finance Managers, and Graphic Designers. Whilst the first three are specifically IT occupations, the last two are non-IT, showing that digital skills are required by employers across the whole labour market. Each occupation includes:

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The International Labour Organization's definition of each ISCO occupation.

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Three key findings brought out by the skills data in our cross-country comparison.

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The top 20 digital skills, with each country compared to the average according to the relative size of each circle.

Systems analysts conduct research, analyse and evaluate client information technology requirements, procedures or problems, and develop and implement proposals, recommendations and plans to improve current or future information systems. Key findings include:

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The three most in-demand skills across all countries are computer science, appearing in 14.61% of all job postings for the role in 2023, SQL (programming language) (12.98%), and data analysis (12.94%).

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The top three above-average skills at the national level are computer science in Switzerland (29.18% vs 14.61% average), computer science in Germany (25.15% vs 14.61%), and Microsoft Office in Germany (12.74% vs 4.43%).

Finance managers plan, direct and coordinate the financial operations of an enterprise or organization, in consultation with senior managers and with managers of other departments or sections, or of enterprises that provide financial services to other enterprises and organizations. Key findings include:

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The top three in-demand skills across all countries are Microsoft Excel, which appeared in 14.68% of all job postings for the role in 2023, forecasting (12.82%), and Microsoft Office (10.26%).

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The top three above-average skills at the national level are Microsoft Office in Germany (26.54% vs 10.26% average), dashboard in France (12.48% vs 2.17%), and Microsoft Excel in Spain (23.52% vs 14.68%).