For almost a decade, IT development jobs (category M1805) have driven the employment dynamic in Luxembourg. Between 2015 and 2022, the number of jobs registered with the national employment agency Adem in this sector more than doubled, rising from 1,024 to 2,507. The year 2022 marked a peak, before an unexpected reversal: offers fell to 1,584 in 2024, a drop of 37% in two years. Yet last year.

The IT consulting sector, which has historically been fond of developers, testers and functional analysts, is particularly affected. Companies whose employees are mainly deployed “on assignment” at a client’s premises are reporting a drop in demand from spring 2024. This is due to a dual trend: on the one hand, clients are reducing their budgets and reconfiguring their projects; on the other, they are bringing certain skills in-house or transferring them to offshore service centres (India, Morocco, Romania, etc.).

At the same time, the number of jobseekers in the IT sector has doubled between 2022 and 2025. At the end of 2024, Adem counted 510 people available, compared with 249 two years earlier. Most of these people will not be unemployed for long, but 22% will be considered long-term jobseekers. For these profiles, there’s an increased risk of skills becoming obsolete, particularly for jobseekers older than 50.

Another shift: young graduates, who were once highly courted, are seeing doors close. Companies prefer “turnkey” profiles who have five to ten years of experience and capable of adapting without in-house training. The result is that juniors and people undergoing retraining--despite being well-trained--are struggling to land their first assignment. It’s a paradox in a sector which, until recently, trained its own talent via in-house academies.

Artificial intelligence is changing the game

This downturn is not just a cyclical accident. It is part of a structural change in the market, fuelled by the rise of artificial intelligence. In 2024, 16.5% of IT vacancies required AI skills, compared with just 3% in 2015. Machine learning is now mentioned in 322 vacancies, and AI text generation (GPT-type) in 92--something that was virtually non-existent before 2023.

Developers aren’t the only ones having to adapt. Cloud architects, cybersecurity consultants and project managers need to master a growing range of tools and standards (devsecops, Azure, ServiceNow, etc.). English is still the language most in demand in job offers (94% in 2024), but French is on the rise, particularly amongst a more French-speaking clientele, which complicates matters for international profiles.

Faced with a more demanding market and rapid technological developments, the need for upskilling is becoming crucial. To remain employable, IT profiles must constantly update their technical, linguistic and behavioural skills. Adem is stepping up its initiatives in this area: in 2024, more than 2,500 participants in targeted training courses (cloud, AI, data, project management) were registered via the Digital Learning Hub.

This article was originally published in .