Italy, a major country in the Europe, is expected to witness a loss of a whopping USD 173 billion in its GDP between 2018 and 2028 as a result of a huge scarcity of professionals in the continent with relevant skills in disruptive technologies. The skill-crisis is so bad in the Italy that it will miss out on a 0.6% increase in its GDP each year from now, till 2028. All of the Europe is facing a dearth of tech talent, especially disruptive technologies like artificial Intelligence, machine learning, and automation, among many others.
As a matter of fact, German companies spend a median six months filling a job position relating to intelligent technology. The dearth of AI skills across European Union is making them lag behind other continents that are prospering at a high rate in terms of economic growth attained through introduction of disruptive technologies in business sectors.
Europe Unable to Attract AI Talent It Needs
The scarcity of AI engineers in the said continent also shows up because of the severe lack of training in AI tech, and an inability to retain talented AI professionals. However, a few new initiatives are being taken by the European Union to fill in the skyrocketing skill-gap in AI and other leading disruptive technologies like automation, blockchain, data science, among others. But still, we are yet to see the results emerging out of such skill-development initiatives. Compared to the world-leaders, i.e. US, China, and UK, Europe is far behind leveraging AI tech to its optimum.
Europe Lacks Job Attractiveness in the AI Sector
Lack of training opportunities for AI aspirants in the continent of Europe is leading to the AI skill-gap growing even wider. It eventually is resulting in fewer companies in the said geographical region being able to adopt the said technology, or more importantly, not being able to implement AI in their business processes. One good option for aspirants to get trained in the industry-relevant & advanced AI concepts is to enroll for the best AI certifications available online.
These are less time-consuming and cost-efficient too, compared with university degrees and post-graduate programs in AI. Talent deficit in Europe also translates into incompetent salaries and less attraction towards AI jobs compared with international labour markets.
Relative Availability of AI Talent in the Europe
In comparison to geography-wise spread of AI talent worldwide, Europe lacks by a big margin. As per a LinkedIn based recent study, it was found that UK possesses 1.8 times of the AI talent available in the Europe, while US boasts of a population of AI talent that is three times more than that of European Union.
PhD talent in Europe in AI and Its Inability to Retain the Same
In-bound talent migration is one of the strong hopes for Europe to fill in its AI talent gap. However, the reality is that EU labour market has failed miserably in attracting a good percentage of international AI talent. The irony of the situation is that although Europe produces a good number of PhD-holders in AI, it loses a large percentage of them to the US.
Top-Ranking Universities Imparting AI Training in Europe
When it comes to the list of top-tier universities that offer education in AI, US outperforms every other country on the planet. On the contrary, EU universities have been heavily underperforming since long. The inefficiency of the European Union in terms of performing well in comparison to the rest of the world lies in its budgetary spending on the improvement of country’s digital skillset. European Council, on July 21st 2020, announced a relatively lower budget of mere 500 million euros to help strengthen the continent’s existing digital skills.
