Purpose: Consideration of the main directions of development of information and communication technologies, as well as the impact of digital competencies on economic growth in the new conditions. Design / Methodology / Approach: This study uses statistical and monographic methods, as well as a survey method. Findings. The study showed that in agricultural production in the current conditions, digital technologies are actively used. This is evidenced by the use of unmanned aerial vehicles, the use of digital platforms and much more. Along with this, the labor market was not ready to offer specialists with knowledge and skills in the field of agricultural production and digital technologies. Practical implications: The problems discussed in the article indicate an urgent need to develop a mechanism for training specialists for the agricultural industry with digital skills. Originality / value: The authors define the concept of the digital economy, and also reveal the essence of the factors affecting its development.

The onset of Fourth Industrial Revolution and its related development of digitization processes has created the need to focus more attention on creating the conditions for the development of adequate human resources skills, on which the pace of innovation depends. The digital transformation of economies has become a global trend, so the need to innovate cannot be ignored if countries want to be competitive in international environment. Therefore, particular governments must respond to this situation and take relevant steps to support these processes. However, the situation in each country is diametrically different. Some of them strive to be leaders in a particular field and systematically support the development of ongoing processes. Others are more indifferent to this situation and their progress is much slower. As in the past, at the time of scientific and technical revolution, this attitude is subsequently reflected in their economic situation. There are also significant differences among EU Member States, despite the fact that the EU is trying to set certain development parameters that should be achieved in each country. The goal of this paper is to theoretically define what changes are taking place as a result of digitization, how the current situation has contributed to those changes, and which key areas should be given priority within each country. In addition, our goal is to find out how the population in Slovak Republic is developing in terms of the achieved level of education, what share of expenditures from GDP goes to education area and research and development support, as well as what is the average amount of these expenditures per capita, and thus to point out to the possible reasons of lagging innovation and modernization capacity of Slovak Republic. The method of descriptive statistics, time series analysis as well as the method of synthesis to formulate conclusions were used.