Barcelona has more than 100,000 digital professionals, a third of whom are international
According to a report promoted by Mobile World Capital, the city of Barcelona has a balance between supply and demand for digital employment slightly above the European and Spanish average.
Barcelona continues to strengthen its position as a pole of attraction for technological talent. This is reflected in the report ‘Digital Talent Overview 2023’, promoted by Mobile Word Capital with the aim of analyzing the impact and evolution of the digital talent gap, the global trends and the different lines of action proposed in order to attract higher quality talent to the ecosystem.
One out of four job offers falls under the digital field
The report shows that Barcelona will reach 100,920 digital professionals in 2022, which represents an 7.9% increase over the previous year. In addition, during the last five years, the demand for digital professionals has doubled, from 15,856 to 33,624 job offers, an increase of 49% since 2018.
Regarding the weight of digital job offers compared to the total number of sectors, 32,276 digital job offers were published in 2022, a figure that doubles the number of job offers in 2018 (15,856). If 5 years ago, one out of ten job offers corresponded to digital professions, in 2022 the proportion increased to one out of four (26%).
Despite the good figures in generating and attracting talent, Barcelona is no stranger to the difficulties experienced by other European capitals in filling vacancies in that sector: in 2018, for each job offer there was an average of 17 digital professionals, while in 2022 the ratio had dropped to 12 professionals.
Among the 20 European cities analyzed by Mobile Word Capital, the ones with the most stressed market are London (2.62 professionals per job offer), Bucharest (2.98) and Vienna (3.38). At the opposite pole we can find the cities with the greatest abundance of professionals per job offer, with Helsinki (31.63) and Zagreb (21.5) leading the way.
Barcelona’s 12.29 professionals per job offer puts the city slightly ahead of both the European (10.89) and the Spanish (11.81) figures.
In the last five years, the number of ICT women has doubled
According to the report, the presence of women in the digital sector in the city of Barcelona is consolidating. If in 2018 there were about 15,000 women exercising digital professions in Barcelona, in the last year there are more than 29,000. This acceleration has allowed to increase the weight of women in the ICT sector from 22% to 28.7%, with digital marketing (46%) and UX/UI (43%) being the professions with the highest female presence.
Benchmark in attracting digital profiles
The report also specifies that Barcelona has attracted nearly 14,000 digital professionals since 2018, 3,300 of which during this past year. Overall, the weight of digital professionals that come from other territories was 32.4% in 2022. In this sense, London, with 11.56%, and Madrid, with 10.97%, are the cities that export more digital talent to the city of Barcelona.
The specialties with the highest proportion of talent from other regions are cybersecurity (43.8%), app development (42.3%) and web development (33.8%).
Growing demand for flexible workspaces
Talent retention is, in fact, one of the biggest challenges that companies have to face today. The pandemic and digitalization have made work models much more flexible when it comes to choosing how to work. In this sense, hiring flexible workspaces has become a growing trend in the labor ecosystem of the city of Barcelona.
Gran Via Business & Meeting Center is the answer to the growing demand for flexible, innovative and technologically advanced offices and workspaces. It is the perfect alternative to conventional offices in the heart of Barcelona.
