One in four information technology firms in the Netherlands say their production has been down since April because they are short of staff, the national statistics office CBS said on Tuesday.

The IT sector has been most affected by the tight jobs market since the first quarter of 2015 when one out of every nine IT companies had staffing problems. Until then the mining sector (gas, oil) had the biggest need for employees.

There were 12,300 job vacancies in the IT sector in the first quarter of 2017, equating to 6.3% of the national total, the CBS said.

The catering sector (hotels, restaurants, cafés) report an 11.3% shortage, industry 9.9% and construction 7.6%.

Above-average growth

Separately, the CBS reported that the IT sector grew faster than the economy as a whole in the period between 2011 and 2015. The CBS follows OECD guidelines and defines the IT sector as including industrial firms and wholesalers dealing in information technology as well as telecoms and IT services companies.

The number of IT firms increased to nearly 72,000 at the end of 2016 from 59,000 in 2011. This means 4.5% of Dutch companies are involved in IT. Most (65,500) are service providers, with 5,600 wholesalers and 800 industrial IT concerns.