{
  "slug": "eastern-europe-it",
  "question": "Where is Europe's IT talent actually growing?",
  "title": "Eastern Europe IT in Numbers",
  "answer": {
    "headline": "Poland's ICT sector employs 687,000 people at an average $2,937/month — 43% of the German ICT wage. Czechia pays the region's top rates and still has the deepest specialist bench.",
    "sample": "ILOSTAT (ISIC Rev.4 J), Eurostat, World Bank — 2024/2025 reference periods",
    "verifiedAsOf": "2026-08-29"
  },
  "sections": [
    {
      "id": "employment",
      "title": "ICT-sector employment",
      "note": "ISIC Rev.4 section J — information and communication. One definition, one source, so countries are directly comparable.",
      "rows": [
        {
          "label": "Germany",
          "value": "1,683k",
          "segment": "reference market",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Poland",
          "value": "687k",
          "segment": "largest CEE ICT workforce",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Czechia",
          "value": "211k",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Romania",
          "value": "205k",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Hungary",
          "value": "164k",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Bulgaria",
          "value": "129k",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        }
      ],
      "chart": "bars"
    },
    {
      "id": "pay",
      "title": "Average monthly ICT wage (US$)",
      "note": "The arbitrage founders actually price: a Czech ICT month costs 57% of a German one; a Hungarian month costs 24%.",
      "rows": [
        {
          "label": "Germany",
          "value": "$6,810",
          "segment": "latest available",
          "period": "2022",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1,
          "stale": true
        },
        {
          "label": "Czechia",
          "value": "$3,914",
          "segment": "region's top rate",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Poland",
          "value": "$2,937",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Bulgaria",
          "value": "$2,626",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Romania",
          "value": "$2,330",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Serbia",
          "value": "$1,845",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Hungary",
          "value": "$1,629",
          "segment": "region's lowest",
          "period": "2024",
          "source": "ILOSTAT",
          "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/",
          "tier": 1
        }
      ],
      "chart": "bars"
    },
    {
      "id": "depth",
      "title": "Depth of the market",
      "note": "Specialist share shows saturation; enterprise counts show where new supply is forming.",
      "rows": [
        {
          "label": "ICT specialists, share of total employment — Czechia",
          "value": "4.7%",
          "segment": "occupation-based",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "Eurostat",
          "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_sks_itspt/default/table",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "ICT specialists — Hungary",
          "value": "4.6%",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "Eurostat",
          "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_sks_itspt/default/table",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "ICT specialists — Poland",
          "value": "4.5%",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "Eurostat",
          "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_sks_itspt/default/table",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "ICT specialists — Romania",
          "value": "2.7%",
          "segment": "most headroom",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "Eurostat",
          "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/isoc_sks_itspt/default/table",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "Software enterprises (NACE J62), Czechia",
          "value": "41,667 → 51,281",
          "segment": "+23% in three years",
          "period": "2021–2024",
          "source": "Eurostat",
          "url": "https://ec.europa.eu",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "ICT service exports, share of service exports — Bulgaria",
          "value": "25.7%",
          "segment": "region's most IT-dependent exporter",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "World Bank",
          "url": "https://api.worldbank.org",
          "tier": 1
        },
        {
          "label": "ICT service exports — Czechia",
          "value": "18.2%",
          "segment": "",
          "period": "2025",
          "source": "World Bank",
          "url": "https://api.worldbank.org",
          "tier": 1
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "reconciliation": {
    "title": "Why \"IT market size\" numbers disagree",
    "body": "Two definitions hide behind the same phrase. \"ICT-sector employment\" (ISIC J) counts everyone employed by information-and-communication companies — including telecom, media and publishing staff. \"ICT specialists\" (Eurostat, occupation-based) counts people doing IT work in any industry — a bank's developers count here, a telecom's accountants don't. Vendor marketing freely mixes the two, which is how the same country gets both \"700k IT workers\" and \"4.5% of employment\" headlines. One country figure from our own graph — Serbia's sector employment — failed our internal plausibility gate and is excluded from this page until re-verified; only the wage figure is shown.",
    "sources": [
      {
        "source": "ILOSTAT — employment by economic activity",
        "url": "https://ilostat.ilo.org/"
      },
      {
        "source": "Eurostat — ICT specialists in employment",
        "url": "https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php?title=ICT_specialists_in_employment"
      }
    ]
  },
  "methodology": "Every number on this page is a fact node in the God of Startups Atlas — a knowledge graph where each metric carries its source URL, reporting period and evidence tier. Tier 1 here means ILOSTAT, Eurostat and the World Bank. Where a figure failed our plausibility checks it is excluded and said so, not silently dropped.",
  "page": "https://godofstartups.com/atlas/eastern-europe-it",
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "note": "Each row carries its primary source, period and evidence tier (1 = official/statutory, 2 = industry research with disclosed method)."
}