People are essential in the data centre market for not only keeping the data centres running and operational but also for developing new data centres. With the rapid increase in data consumption and the related demand for data centre capacity, it is essential to have qualified specialists that can improve existing data centres and develop new data centres to facilitate the growth in data consumption.

However, the global data centre market is challenged by a lack of available and qualified people. According to a study by Uptime Institute, global data centre staff requirements are forecasted to grow by approximately 300,000 to 2.3 million people in 2025, up from 2 million in 2019. This is especially prevalent in the US and EMEA, Western Europe specifically, with a lack of available qualified staff concerned about the so-called “silver tsunami”, a wave of retirements in the coming years, leaving fewer experienced and qualified staff to train new talent.

The slowly declining working-age population also reflects this wave of retirements in Europe. Currently, 64.2% of Europe is within working age. Based on forecast data from Oxford Economics, this percentage will shrink to 63.7% by 2025, reflecting a loss of nearly 1.5 million working-age people. However, this number reflects all workforce across all industries and sectors. For data centres, a better indicator of the availability of inflow of new talent is the people with ICT education and/or background.

Although the total working-age population is set to decline, the share of people employed in the ICT sector and with an ICT education and/or background in Europe has been growing steadily since 2015. The share of ICT employment as % of the total working-age population is forecasted to remain stable or slightly increase in the coming years. All in all, the findings from Uptime Institute show that by 2025 there is a need for 80,000 new data centre staff in Europe.

_{Read the articles within Spotlight: European Data Centres below.}