How many knowledge managers are there in the world, and where are they?

 Of course there is no list of global knowledge managers, and as a proxy I made a count of the number of people on LinkedIn with the word “Knowledge” (or Conocimiento, or Connaissance, or Kennis, etc etc) in their current job title, in a selection of the larger countries. They could be knowledge managers, chief knowledge officers, knowledge leaders, knowledge experts, knowledge engineers and so on.

Of course

1. there may be some people in that list who have Knowledge in the title in another context (for example “Student with knowledge of French”),
2. there may be knowledge managers not on linked-in, 
3. some of the people may have been counted twice (with both Knowledge and Conocimento in their job title, perhaps)
4. I did not search through every country (only the bigger ones where I know there is a history of KM), 
5. nor did I search for every language equivalent of “Knowledge”. 

Where the knowledge managers are

Total number of knowledge managers per country. Jan 2020

Of course many of the countries at the top of this list are large countries. We need to look at the number of knowledge people as a proportion of the national population. This is shown in the picture and list below (the list shows the number of people on LinkedIn with Knowledge in their title, divided by the national population in millions).

The USA  is no longer top of the list – that honour goes to the Netherlands, just as it did in 2014, where 133 out of each million (one in 7500) has knowledge in their job title (subject to all the caveats above). The USA is now in 11th place.

Of course the number of people counted from LinkedIn is unreliable, as the global use of LinkedIn is highly variable. Perhaps the lack of knowledge managers in China is because there is less use of LinkedIn in China, for example?

The map and list below account for this, and shows, for each country,  the number of people on Linked with Knowledge etc in their job title, per million people on LinkedIn. This may be a truer representation of the distribution of KM interest.

Now we see Israel as top of the list, followed by the Netherlands again. China is still at the bottom. USA has fallen to 23rd place.

In every country other than Switzerland and Norway, the number of “Knowledge Managers” with all the caveats above, has increased. The countries are listed below in order of increase in “Knowledge Manager” population over the past 5 years. This gives us a proxy measure for areas where KM seems to be on the increase, vs countries where the topic is relatively mature.

Country	increase in knowledge managers 2014 to 2020
indonesia	168%
germany	159%
poland	150%
phillipines	143%
iran	142%
chile	135%
saudi arabia	129%
france	125%
colombia	98%
spain	97%
thailand	95%
china	91%
UAE	86%
mexico	84%
belgium	71%
ireland	70%
italy	66%
brazil	66%
hong kong	66%
sweden	59%
India	56%
israel	51%
malaysia	50%
Australia	43%
singapore	39%
south africa	37%
canada	34%
UK	33%
austria	33%
netherlands	29%
new Zealand	28%
russia	28%
USA	28%
Argentina	27%
denmark	15%
norway	-1%
switzerland	-11%

Note that these increases are only partly due to an increase in the number of people using LinkedIn. LinkedIn usage is increasing rapidly (on average 120% in the last 5 years for the countries in this study), while the increase in KM numbers is at a lower rate (on average 70%). Possibly the Knowledge Managers were early adopters of LinkedIn, and are now becoming diluted as others join.

Bearing in mind the caveats above – 

• There are in the order of 47500 knowledge management people in the world
• The largest numbers are in the USA, then India, then the UK
• In terms of percentage of Knowledge Managers in the national population, the Netherlands is the highest, then Belgium, then Switzerland. Russia and China are at the bottom.
• In terms of the percentage of  Knowledge Managers in the linkedIn population, Israel is at the top of the list, then the Netherlands, then Belgium. Russia and China are still at the bottom.
• The greatest percentage growth in numbers is in Indonesia, Germany, Poland and the Phillipines. Numbers have decreased in Switzerland and Norway.