Analysis of Peculiarities of Digital Skill Gaps and Unemployment

Abstract

This paper examines whether weaker digital skills and digital-use practices are associated with higher unemployment across European Union countries, and whether this association differs by gender and age. The empirical focus is on three observable digital indicators included in the analytical workbook: email use, social media use, and online news use. The analytical design is descriptive rather than causal: the purpose is to identify cross-country patterns that can inform management, labour-market and digital-inclusion debates in the digital era. For each EU country, sex and age group, a separate bivariate ordinary least squares regression is estimated for several age intervals. The results show that lower digital skills are more often associated with higher unemployment where the country-level relationships are statistically significant. The pattern is strongest and most regular for social media and email-related indicators, while online news produces a less uniform but still meaningful pattern. Men display more frequent significant associations in the older age group, especially for email and social media, suggesting that digital exclusion among older workers may interact with sectoral employment patterns, job-search technologies and age-specific labour-market constraints. The paper contributes by linking basic digital capabilities to labour-market inclusion.