Information and telecommunications technologies will create additional jobs in the year 2008. According to new estimates by the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM), the number of employees in this sector will increase by up to 4000 to 820.000 people this year. In the course of a BITKOM study carried out in the first quarter of 2008, 57% of companies said that they wanted to create more jobs. 34% of companies said they would keep the number of their employees unchanged and just 9% wanted to cut jobs.
The above-mentioned upward trend is mainly due to software companies and IT service providers which created more than 60.000 new jobs over the five past years. In the year 2007 alone these companies recruited 17.000 additional staff, in particular programmers, IT consultants and project managers. According to the BITKOM study, 65% of IT businesses said that the lack of IT specialists was hampering their business activities. BITKOM laments that although the IT sector is currently sponsoring almost fifty professorships at universities and supporting more than 20.000 schools, public commitment is still lacking.
BITKOM demands to increase the share of students of technical study courses to international standards. To this end, in particular women should be motivated to enrol in such courses. In addition, the current rate of drop-outs had to be lowered, study times shortened and counselling for students be improved. 