The COVID-19 pandemic is presenting major challenges to global economic growth in 2020.
Yet the global demand for digital technologies and industrial “digitalization” continue to proceed.
Therefore, it is of particular importance to analyze the development status of digital talent in core
cities and regions globally under the effect of the pandemic. It can help us to understand the future
trends of digital economic development worldwide, and assess the impact of the pandemic on
digital economies in cities and regions in comparison with the pre-pandemic data. For the year
2021, we studied the data (as of December 31, 2020) to gain insight into over 48 million talents
(among them, the number of digital talents is about 15 million) from 31 core cities and regions
globally. Our study presents an in-depth analysis of the development status of global digital
talent and the trend of the digital economy from the perspective of the industrial distribution, skill
characteristics and the migration of talent. Meanwhile, in comparison with the data in 2019, we
identified major changes in the industrial distribution and migration trends in 2020. We analyzed
these changes from the perspectives of policies and pandemic status of the respective cities or
regions.
This study analyzes the industrial distribution of digital talent from the perspectives of
ICT industries (including software and IT services and networking and hardware) and non-ICT
industries ( including 22 traditional industries such as manufacturing, finance and consumer
goods). In the 31 cities (regio
ns) studied, the proportion of digital talent in non-ICT industries has
been increasing. The absolute quantity of digital talent in non-ICT industries in cities (regions) has
also increased compared to the previous year. That suggests digital talent is constantly migrating to
traditional industries and the global industrial digitization is developing in depth. The proportion of
digital talent in non-ICT industries in major cities in China has increased significantly compared to
the 2019 data. That reflects the acceleration of China's digital economic acceleration and industrial
digital transformation.
We looked closer at four ICT industries (including software and IT services and networking
and hardware) and four non-ICT industries (manufacturing, finance, consumer goods and
corporate services). The Asia Pacific region leads in the distribution proportion of digital talent in
the manufacturing, finance, and consumer goods sectors. Chinese cities rank top in manufacturing
and consumer goods. Europe leads in the proportion of digital talent in corporate services, and
North America has a relatively balanced distribution of digital talent in various industries. It is worth
noting that compared to 2019, the distribution proportion of digital talent in cities (regions) in those
ICT industries has decreased, indicating that digital talent in cities (regions) is gradually moving
from ICT industries to other industries.
Among the world's leading innovation cities (regions), digital skills are more and more
representative. However, there are differences between the regions. The rankings of digital skills
in Chinese mainland cities since 2020 have continuously risen compared with other representative
skills. In contrast, although other cities (regions) in the Asia Pacific region are dominated by digital
skills, the ranking of industrial skills is also rising. The representative skills in Europe and the United
States have not changed much.
We define digital skills that match disruptive technologies as disruptive digital skills, and other
digital skills as basic digital skills. Compared with basic digital skills, disruptive digital skills can
not only improve the production efficiency of products or services, but also may disrupt traditional
production methods, thereby disrupting traditional economic development models. Disruptive digital
skills are the core force driving profound digitalization. It is creating new scenarios for the digital
age. We looked at the relative penetration of the top 10 representative disruptive tech skills (genetic
engineering, data science, artificial intelligence, development tools, cybersecurity, human-computer
interaction, robotics, aerospace engineering, materials science and nanotechnology) in 31 cities
(regions) globally in 2020. Compared with 2019, the disruptive digital skills of each city (region)
have further developed.
We have analyzed the changes in the attraction of cities (regions) around the world to
international and domestic digital talent in 2020 [the attraction of digital talent = total inflow of digital
talent/total outflow of digital talent in local city(region)]. The proportion of digital talent flow to North
America from Europe and the Asia Pacific region is increasing. In North America, the attraction of
United States cities is decreasing while the digital talent attraction of Canadian cities is increasing.
European cities (regions) such as Germany, Dublin, and Copenhagen have great advantages in
attracting international and domestic digital talent. Singapore and the United Arab Emirates in the
Asia Pacific region are highly attractive to international digital talent. Shanghai, Hangzhou and
Shenzhen are globally competitive cities for digital talent in 2020.
