Domestic Data Industry Market Reaches 20 Trillion Won... 390,000 People Make a Living

Government Announces 2021 Data Industry Status Survey Results

[Asia Economy Reporter Minyoung Cha] The domestic data industry market has grown to a 20 trillion won scale last year, with the workforce reaching 390,000 people including both direct and indirect employment. The government plans to expand the Data Dam project next year, given the clear growth trend in the data industry.

The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Data Industry Promotion Agency (K-DATA) announced the results of the '2021 Data Industry Status Survey' on the 29th. The survey targeted 8,740 data companies, analyzing responses from 1,369 companies to derive the results.

Last year, the size of the domestic data industry market was estimated at 20 trillion won, an 18.7% increase from the previous year (16.9 trillion won). The average annual growth rate of the data industry market from 2018 to 2020 was 13.3%. This is 3.5 percentage points higher than the 5-year average annual growth rate (9.8%) from 2016 to 2020, indicating a steep growth trend in the past two years.

By sector, the year-on-year growth rates were highest in data sales and brokerage services (41.7%↑), data-related consulting (31.5%↑), and data security solutions (29.5%↑), in that order.

The direct sales of the data industry market also increased by 22.5% from 10 trillion won the previous year to 12.2 trillion won. Direct sales refer to the portion of total data sales excluding indirect sales such as advertising and system operation management. The proportion of direct sales in the total data industry market also slightly rose from 59.2% in the previous year to 61.1% last year.

During this period, among direct sales, data sales and brokerage services showed the largest increase (34.2%↑), followed by data-related consulting (31.5%↑) and data security solutions (29.5%↑).

As of this year, the total workforce engaged in the data industry, including both data-related and non-data-related roles, was counted at 394,709 people.

Among them, data-related roles including eight categories?data developers, database administrators, data analysts, data engineers, data scientists, data planners, data consultants, and data architects?accounted for 122,431 people, an increase of 20,000 (20.1%) compared to 2020.

Based on the survey results, the Ministry of Science and ICT plans to expand the Data Dam project next year by additionally building 310 types of AI training data and supporting 2,680 data vouchers. The full statistical report will be available on the Ministry of Science and ICT and K-DATA websites in March next year.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.