The number of employees in the local software sector has more than doubled over the last five years from around 25,000 to over 55,000 employees, according to preliminary data from a survey conducted by the Information Technology Institute (ITC).
The IT&C sector is therefore one of the few fields in the economy where all the graduates from specialised colleges are recruited by specialised companies.
The annual increase in the number of staff almost overlaps the total number of IT&C college graduates, a situation that is difficult to explain given that a large part of the graduates are recruited to work in the service centres of multinationals or in the IT departments of companies that operate on non-IT sectors.
This therefore confirms that many companies prefer to recruit staff while they are still in college, or alternatively employ people trained in other fields.
Out of the total number of employees around 30% work for the top 100 companies in the software and services sector, which includes multinational branches and local large and medium-sized companies.
ITC officials estimate that the employees of multinationals earn more than 25,000 euros a year on average, while local large and medium-sized companies that mainly specialise in software development paid an average gross salary of 13,000-20,000 euros last year.
The average salary paid by the top 100 companies - 13,580 euros, is almost double the average of the entire software and services sector, which was estimated at 7,435 euros in 2007.
The average turnover per employee stands at 37,760 euros, compared with 34,100 euros reported in 2006, while the average added value per employee (productivity) increased by just 15% and reached 15,460 euros, a result that confirmed the opinions of both economic analysts and the National Bank.
According to the ITC survey, the grow
