73% of German information and telecommunications companies (ITC) expect turnover to increase. 17% think that their sales are going to remain unchanged and just ten percent believe that turnover is going to fall. This will affect the labour market: fifty percent of ITCs want to employ more people. These figures are from a current survey by the German Association for Information Management, Telecommunications and New Media (BITKOM).
The demand for additional staff is particularly high in software companies and with regard to information technology service providers. 79% of software manufacturers and providers of services in the field of information technology expect turnover to increase in the year 2008. Furthermore, almost three quarters of these companies forecast higher profits. Almost two thirds of computer manufacturers and other information technology equipment expect increased turnover. The same applies to the field of communication technology where most companies predict business to grow.
Growing turnover will create more jobs in many companies. According to the current survey, 57% of ITC companies want to recruit new staff in the year 2008. One third plan to leave the number of their employees unchanged and only one in eleven companies will have to cut jobs. Most new jobs will be created in software companies and IT service providers. These companies created already 17,000 new jobs last year.
With regard to the ITC branch as a whole, BITKOM expects an increase by 4000 jobs to 820,000 employees in the year 2008. According to Prof. Dr. August-Wilhelm Scheer, who is BITKOM president, there could be even some thousand more new jobs in this field, if there were enough IT specialists available on the labour market. Thus, 65% of companies interviewed in the course of the above-mentioned survey said that a lack of experts was curbing their business activities. Most affected by this are small and medium-sized software manufacturers and IT service providers which are in particular looking for university graduates. One in four companies had to decline contracts due to a lack of employees. 