Digital capability is now closely tied to participation in work, access to higher-skill occupations, and the technologies employers use. Eurostat reported that 69% of EU employees, self-employed people, and family workers aged 16–74 had at least basic overall digital skills in 2025. World Bank evidence adds a wider Europe and Central Asia view: in the 2022 survey wave, 43.66% of respondents reported no digital skills, while 35.51% reported high digital skills.
Table of contents
- Digital skill levels by labour-market status
- Age, sex, and education gaps
- ICT specialists in EU employment
- Digital technology demand from businesses
- Europe and Central Asia skill patterns
- Worker characteristics linked with high digital skills
- Digital skills, wages, and online vacancies
Digital skill levels by labour-market status
The EU figures describe the share of people aged 16–74 reaching at least a basic overall digital-skills level. For workers, the relevant 2025 measure combines employees, self-employed people, and family workers. Their 69% result places working people between students and people outside the labour force.
| EU population group, 2025 | At least basic digital skills |
|---|---|
| Employees, self-employed people, and family workers | 69% |
| Students | 80% |
| Unemployed people | 54% |
| Retired or outside the labour force, excluding students | 37% |
| People with higher education | 82% |
| People with no or low formal education | 38% |
Source: Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe, 2025.
Students recorded the highest result in this comparison, at 80%. The share was 54% among unemployed people and 37% among retired people or others outside the labour force, excluding students. These categories describe different labour-market positions, so they should not be read as a direct measure of job performance. They do show how digital capability is distributed across groups that may enter, leave, or seek work.
Education is one of the sharpest divides in the EU data. In 2025, 82% of people with higher education had at least basic digital skills, including 50% with above-basic skills. Among people with no or low formal education, 38% had at least basic skills. The overall basic-skill measure therefore includes a wide range of proficiency, while the higher-education figure also identifies a substantial above-basic segment.
Age, sex, and education gaps
Digital skill levels were relatively high among younger adults and lower among older adults in the 2025 EU results. Among people aged 16–24, 76% of women and 73% of men had at least basic digital skills. Among those aged 25–34, the corresponding shares were 75% for women and 74% for men.
The pattern changed among people aged 65–74. At least basic skills were reported by 38% of men and 29% of women in that age group. Eurostat described the gender gap there as 9 percentage points. Across all EU people aged 16–74, 62% of men and 59% of women had at least basic digital skills.
These figures indicate that the difference between women and men was not uniform across age groups. Women were 3 percentage points ahead of men among 16–24-year-olds and 1 point ahead among 25–34-year-olds, while men were 9 points ahead among 65–74-year-olds. The comparison is about reported skill attainment, not the share of women or men in employment.
Education adds another dimension. The 82% basic-skill result for people with high formal education was 44 percentage points above the 38% result for people with no or low formal education. Because the Digital Skills Indicator is activity-based, the figures reflect demonstrated activities covered by the indicator rather than a single examination score.
Source for the age, sex, education, and indicator definitions: Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe, 2025.
ICT specialists in EU employment
The EU had 10.4 million people employed as ICT specialists in 2025. ICT specialists represented 5% of total EU employment. This is a measure of specialist occupations, so it is distinct from the much broader share of workers with at least basic digital skills.
Women accounted for 19.5% of ICT employment in the EU. ICT occupations represented 2.2% of women’s employment and 7.8% of men’s employment. The male–female ICT-employment share gap was 9.5 percentage points in Luxembourg, 8.8 points in Sweden, and 8.5 points in the Netherlands.
| EU employment measure, 2025 | Reported share |
|---|---|
| ICT specialists in total EU employment | 5% |
| Women in ICT employment | 19.5% |
| ICT occupations in women’s employment | 2.2% |
| ICT occupations in men’s employment | 7.8% |
| ICT specialists in Sweden’s total employment | 9.4% |
| ICT specialists in Greece’s total employment | 2.6% |
National employment structures differed considerably. ICT specialists made up 9.4% of total employment in Sweden and 2.6% in Greece. Among ICT specialists, women represented 27.8% in Romania, the highest national share reported by Eurostat, and 12.9% in Czechia, the lowest national share reported in the same comparison.
Source: Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe, 2025.
Digital technology demand from businesses
Workplace technology adoption provides another view of the skills employers may need. In 2025, 47% of EU enterprises used sophisticated or intermediate cloud-computing services. Finland recorded the highest share among EU countries, at 73%, while Bulgaria recorded 16%.
Adoption also varied by business activity. Information and communication businesses had a 78% uptake rate for sophisticated or intermediate cloud services. The rate was 61% in professional, scientific, and technical businesses, 42% in construction, 41% in transport and storage, and 38% in retail.
| EU enterprise group, 2025 | Sophisticated or intermediate cloud use |
|---|---|
| Information and communication | 78% |
| Professional, scientific, and technical | 61% |
| Construction | 42% |
| Transport and storage | 41% |
| Retail | 38% |
One in five EU enterprises, or 20%, used at least one artificial-intelligence technology in 2025. Cloud adoption and AI use are enterprise-level indicators; they do not state how many employees personally used each tool or what training they received. They do, however, show that digital work requirements differ by country and industry.
Source: Eurostat, Towards Digital Decade targets for Europe, 2025.
Europe and Central Asia skill patterns
The World Bank’s analysis of the 2022 Life in Transition Survey covered 30 countries in Europe and Central Asia and used self-reported digital capabilities. In that analysis, 43.66% of respondents reported no digital skills, 20.84% reported basic digital skills, and 35.51% reported high digital skills.
The regional results varied. The high-digital-skills share was 47.20% in Central Europe and 47.60% in the Baltic States. It was 23.59% in Central Asia. Among the listed Central European countries, Germany had a 64.31% high-digital-skills share. In Central Asia, the share was 15.92% in the Kyrgyz Republic and 10.16% in Tajikistan.
These percentages come from the 2022 survey wave and should not be treated as a 2025 EU estimate. They also use categories from the World Bank analysis, including “no,” “basic,” and “high” digital skills, rather than Eurostat’s “at least basic overall digital skills” measure. The different definitions and geography mean the results are best used as complementary evidence.
Source: World Bank, The Effects of Digital Literacy on Wages in Europe and Central Asia, 2022 survey wave.
Worker characteristics linked with high digital skills
The same Europe and Central Asia analysis describes the composition of the high-digital-skills group. People aged 25–39 made up 43.38% of that group, people aged 40–64 made up 38.26%, and people aged 18–24 made up 18.36%.
Education was also prominent in the group composition. People with higher education made up 42.58% of the high-digital-skills group, compared with 7.32% for people with less than upper-secondary education. Men made up 54.15% of the group and women 45.85%.
Urban residents represented 65.27% of the high-digital-skills group, compared with 34.73% for rural residents. Managers and professionals made up 40.68%, while elementary workers made up 23.80%. Employees accounted for 86.19% of the group and self-employed people for 7.18%.
| Characteristic within the high-digital-skills group | Share |
|---|---|
| Age 25–39 | 43.38% |
| Age 40–64 | 38.26% |
| Age 18–24 | 18.36% |
| Higher education | 42.58% |
| Less than upper-secondary education | 7.32% |
| Urban residents | 65.27% |
| Rural residents | 34.73% |
These are composition shares within the high-digital-skills group, not probabilities that a person with a given characteristic will be highly skilled. That distinction matters: a group’s representation can reflect both its size in the surveyed population and its digital-skill distribution.
Source: World Bank, The Effects of Digital Literacy on Wages in Europe and Central Asia, 2022 survey wave.
Digital skills, wages, and online vacancies
The World Bank analysis estimated that workers with advanced digital skills earned an average 18.9% higher wage than workers without digital skills. The estimated high-digital-skills wage premium was 47.7% in Central Asia, 26.7% in Eastern Europe, and 23.5% in the South Caucasus. These are estimates from an analysis of the 2022 survey wave, and the wage results concern working-age respondents with wage income.
Employer demand is visible in a separate World Bank source covering global online postings in 2024. Intermediate digital skills were required in 27% of postings for high-skilled occupations, while advanced digital skills were required in 21%. For medium-skilled occupations, 14% of postings required intermediate or advanced digital skills.
Demand was especially concentrated in several industries. Advanced digital skills were required in 60% of online postings in IT services, 53% in professional services, and 44% in finance and insurance. Nearly 90% of postings for ICT professionals required advanced digital skills, compared with 62% for ICT technicians.
The job-posting figures describe online vacancies rather than all employment, and they are global measures. They therefore complement, rather than replace, the EU employment statistics and the Europe and Central Asia survey evidence. Together, the measures show three different aspects of digital work: people’s reported capabilities, the specialist workforce already employed, and the skills employers request in online vacancies.
Sources: World Bank, The Effects of Digital Literacy on Wages in Europe and Central Asia, 2022 survey wave and analysis published 2026; World Bank, Digital Progress and Trends Report 2025: Strengthening AI Foundations, 2024 online postings.