The IT shortage has moved

“There is a shortage of IT people” has been a standing claim in Norwegian working life for more than ten years. The figures from 2025 and 2026 give a more nuanced picture: Norway has many IT specialists, growth has levelled off, and unemployment in IT occupations is rising. At the same time, enterprises say they lack specific competence, and the projections towards 2030 show a deficit. We have gathered the most important figures from public sources.

• 5,9 %of all employed people in Norway were ICT specialists in 2025. The EU average was 5.0 %.Eurostat
• 30,7 %of the enterprises that recruited ICT specialists had vacancies that were hard to fill. In the EU the share was 57.5 %.Eurostat, recruitment in 2023
• 21 000ICT specialists must be recruited by 2030 in the main scenario. Supply covers an estimated 17,000.Samfunnsøkonomisk analyse, 2025

Norway ranks high in Europe

According to Eurostat, 171,100 people in Norway were employed as ICT specialists in 2025. That is 5.9 per cent of total employment, against 4.5 per cent in 2015 and 5.0 per cent in the EU as a whole. Norway is level with Switzerland and Belgium, but some way behind Sweden and Finland.

The register figures from SSB show the same development. In the two largest IT occupational groups, ICT professionals and ICT technicians, there were 93,133 employed in the fourth quarter of 2025 – 50 per cent more than in 2015, according to our calculations. In the same period, employment across all occupations grew by 10.6 per cent. The share of women is still low: 22.9 per cent of ICT specialists in Norway are women.

The pressure has eased since 2022

Growth has nevertheless levelled off. Employment in the same IT occupations grew by 7.7 per cent in 2022, but only by 1.8 per cent in 2024 and 0.6 per cent in 2025. Several indicators show that recruitment pressure has eased since the peak in 2022–2023.

Nav estimates that in 2026 enterprises lack around 2,300 people in engineering and ICT occupations. In March of the same year, 4,700 people in this occupational group were fully unemployed or on a labour market programme. In September 2026 there were 800 more than a year earlier. It was the largest increase of all occupational groups, albeit from a low level and partly driven by the petroleum industry.

For individual occupations the figures are small: Nav estimates a shortage of around 150 software developers and around 100 in each of the groups systems analysts and architects, application programmers, and network and systems technicians. The estimates have wide margins of uncertainty.

The shortage has not disappeared – it has moved

That more IT people are available does not mean it is easy to find the right person. When Norwegian enterprises explain why ICT vacancies were hard to fill, qualifications and experience come up again and again – not just the number of applicants.

Samfunnsøkonomisk analyse reaches the same conclusion in its report on the labour market for ICT specialists towards 2030: experienced specialists and experts are the hardest to find, and demand is growing fastest in IT security and artificial intelligence.

Nor is the need evenly spread. In NHO’s competence barometer for 2025, 24 per cent of member companies say they need competence in ICT. Large enterprises with more than 250 employees stand out, and companies in telecom and finance report the need two to three times as often as others. In Nav’s employer survey, 40.8 per cent of enterprises in information and communication expect to increase their staff over the next year. The net share is 33.7, against 11.1 for all industries combined.

The arithmetic towards 2030

Samfunnsøkonomisk analyse estimates that Norway had around 116,000 ICT specialists in 2024, by its own definition. In the main scenario the number grows by 12,000 towards 2030. Adding around 1,500 unfilled positions today and some 7,500 retirements, the recruitment need comes to around 21,000 people – or 37,000 in a high scenario.

On the supply side, around 33,000 new candidates with an ICT education are expected, about 5,500 a year. But only around 52 per cent of those with an ICT education work as ICT specialists. The effective supply is therefore closer to 17,000, which does not cover the need even in the main scenario.

The education figures point the same way. After ten years of growth, the number of applicants to IT studies fell by 22 per cent in 2025, and in 2026 it held steady at around 5,500, according to the Ministry of Education and Research. The EU’s target is 20 million ICT specialists by 2030. Today there are just over 10 million.

What does this mean for companies that are hiring?

• Recruit for the task, not for volume. The shortage is less about more hands and much more about specific experience. A precise description of what the specialist is to solve makes it easier to find someone who can actually do it.
• Start early for senior roles, security and AI. This is where the competition for candidates is fiercest.
• Use today’s market to build in-house. With more junior and mid-level candidates available, it can pay to hire and develop your own people now, before the gap towards 2030 sets in.
• Combine permanent and flexible. Hired-in specialist competence can cover the peaks, such as a security review or a cloud migration, while permanent staff build knowledge over time.
• Look beyond the degree. When only half of those with an ICT education work as ICT specialists, documented experience is often a better filter than the degree.

The figures describe a market that is in balance on numbers but short on experience. That is a different challenge from three years ago, and it calls for more precise recruitment.

About the figures

The sources use different definitions, so the figures cannot be compared directly. Eurostat (171,100) is based on the labour force surveys and a broad definition of ICT specialists. The SSB figures (93,133) are register data for the occupational groups ICT professionals and ICT technicians, and the totals are our own calculations. Samfunnsøkonomisk analyse (116,000) uses its own definition. Nav’s estimates are based on a survey of enterprises, rounded to the nearest 50, and have wide margins of uncertainty.