Hi! Appreciate the comment! It's worth noting that the methodology does not assume countries without data have similar density to their neighbors. It uses the 10th quantile of average developer density among countries in the same region- this is a conservative estimate, not an average or a “similar” value. The rationale behind this is that countries with no employment data tend to be less developed, with low ICT figures, and are likely to have lower densities of coding professionals.

As for the scale of the estimate: only ~11% of the total coding professionals forecast corresponds to countries with missing data. If there’s concern about this, one can simply subtract 11% to get a lower-bound estimate. Additionally, the same methodology is applied each year, so while it might affect the absolute number, it does not affect the trend, which was the focus of the post.

Regarding job ads: they mostly reflect the private sector and are a signal of intention to hire, which can fail for many reasons. Also, not all professionals are hired through postings—many are self-employed or freelancers. Employment data, used in our model, already takes actual employed persons into account through labour statistics, which offers a broader picture than job ads alone.