The workforce in the defence sector’s priority occupations is estimated to grow by 53,000 between 2025 and 2035, according to an answer given in Parliament.
Callum Anderson, the Labour member for Buckingham and Bletchley, asked what analysis had been undertaken of the defence sector’s future workforce requirements.
Luke Pollard, the Minister for Defence Readiness and Industry, said: “The Ministry of Defence has been working closely with Skills England and industry, through the Defence Industrial Joint Council, to understand skill gaps in the sector.
“In August, in conjunction with Skills England, we published a Defence Sector Skills Needs Assessment, which identified that the workforce in the defence sector’s priority occupations is estimated to grow by 53,000 workers between 2025 and 2035.
“We are also developing a Defence Jobs Plan with ADS, which will articulate the skill challenges the sector faces and the steps that the Government and industry are putting in place to ensure the sector has the workforce it requires.”
Shortages of suitably qualified and experienced people have surfaced repeatedly in the department’s own project reporting as a cause of delay, and the submarine, shipbuilding and complex weapons programmes now competing for the same welders, engineers and systems specialists are the ones that make a ten-year growth figure of this size hard to deliver.
People don’t get experience without first being given the opportunity to gain it! TRAIN!! Stop expecting ready made experienced workers to magically appear out of thin air. There are motivated people who get rejection after rejection after rejection and I have scant sympathy for companies crying about a shortage of workers.
Hear hear.
“Entry level” jobs now seem to expect three years of experience – waived only for those who are “networked” (nepotismed) into positions.
There are oceans of young graduates (or even those who, gasp, haven’t gone to uni) looking for employment, and yet businesses crying and moaning about skills shortages.
As an illustration of this, one of my close friends has just graduated from a Russel Group University, with a first-class integrated Master’s degree in aerospace engineering.
He works in a sandwich shop.
One of my other friends on the course chose to pursue a PhD, mostly because they did not want to suffer through oceans of rejections. Another was rejected from “engineering” jobs that were really technician jobs, and went travelling instead on money saved from weekend jobs throughout uni.
Only one of our group of seven actually secured an aerospace engineering job right out of the gate (airbus), yet even they cannot start work due to security/background checks lasting months!
Seems highly unlikely now Burnham has decided to support the USA and therefore Russia by not buying British. Besides there are what 3 or 4 million unemployed, 5 or 6 million isln shit paid part time jobs and another 10 million civil service get in the way one pushers justifying their existence to recruit from. It’s easy to find enough people and frankly 3’6d a year shouldn’t be hard to find and will attract almost everyone apart frome CEOs in today’s shit wage climate
Its a good job the government has let ithousands of skilled workers flood are borders recently as they dont train people for this line of work in England