In a global survey conducted in the summer of 2020 among readers of the Harvard Business Review, 84 percent of respondents indicated that the number of projects in their company had increased over the past five years; in 26 percent of cases, there were even more than half as many projects in 2020 as in 2015 (see Exhibit). In 2022, 34.5 percent of all work in Germany will be done in projects, according to a study by GPM Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement (2023, p. 9), “in which 730 companies from all ten economic sectors in Germany participated.”
The number of project-related jobs* in ten countries with established or rapidly developing project management industries** analyzed by the Project Management Institute (2013, p. 3; 2017, p. 4) also grew from 28.1 million to 60.1 million between 2010 and 2017. This represents a compound annual growth rate of 11.5 percent. By 2030, the Project Management Institute (2021, p. 4; 2022, p. 3) expects an additional 25 million project workers to be needed (i.e., 2.3 million per year), of which 12 million will be due to job creation and expansion of project work and 13 million will be due to age-related retirements.
* Within project-intensive industries: Manufacturing & Construction, Information Services & Publishing, Finance & Insurance, Management & Professional Services, Utilities, and Oil & Gas
** Asia/Pacific (Australia, Japan), China (Mainland China), Europe (Germany, United Kingdom), Latin America (Brazil), Middle East/North Africa (Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates), North America (Canada), and South Asia (India)
References
GPM Deutsche Gesellschaft für Projektmanagement (2023) Projektifizierung 2.0: Zweite Makroökonomische Vermessung der Projekttätigkeit in Deutschland [Projectification 2.0: Second Macroeconomic Survey of Project Activity in Germany] (UVK Verlag, Munich, Germany).
Nieto-Rodriguez A (2021) State of project management: First global study on the executives views on project management. Presentation. Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, Madrid, Spain. Accessed January 09, 2025, https://antonionietorodriguez.com/harvard-business-review-in-spanish.
Project Management Institute (2013) PMI’s industry growth forecast: Project management between 2010 + 2020. Report, Project Management Institute, Newton Square, PA.
Project Management Institute (2017) Project management job growth and talent gap: 2017–2027. Report, Global Operations Center, Project Management Institute, Newton Square, PA.
Project Management Institute (2021) Talent gap: Ten-year employment trends, costs, and global implications. Report, Global Headquarters, Project Management Institute, Newton Square, PA.
Project Management Institute (2022) 2022 jobs report: Opportunity amid recovery. Report, Global Headquarters, Project Management Institute, Newton Square, PA.
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