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Training: Rising demand reveals shortage of talent

This year’s move by Sir James Dyson, the businessman behind the best-selling bagless vacuum cleaner, to double the number of his engineering staff from 350 to 700 has helped buoy the prospects of graduates emerging on to a jobs markets still recovering from the deep headcount reductions prompted by the global recession.

A fragile recovery in engineering demand and attempts by companies to protect their skill base by offering short-time working as an alternative to redundancy have helped improve the prospects for many working in the the sector.

But Sir James’ recruitment drive at his headquarters in Malmesbury, Wiltshire, comes in spite of his acceptance that the UK along with European competitors face a skills gap, as graduates have drifted away from engineering to seek employment in more attractive industries, such as banking and the service economy.

The latest annual report by EngineeringUK, formerly the Engineering Technology Board, suggests that Britain’s engineering industry will need to recruit nearly 600,000 trained staff by 2017 to meet demands in growth areas such as power generation, aerospace and transport.

Britain is not alone. Leaders of German engineering companies, still reeling from the biggest economic crisis in decades, have also complained recently that they face a skills shortage that threatens to undermine recovery in the country many consider the engineering powerhouse of Europe.

Sir James’s own recent report Ingenious Britain – commissioned by David Cameron when leader of the opposition – called for more government support to create a renaissance in British engineering. He insists that working on R&D can be both financially and existentially rewarding.

“It will be a problem – there will be a shortage of skilled and graduate engineers,” he says.
“But a survey suggests that just 16 per cent of engineers are unhappy, compared with 40 per cent of media and 24 per cent in medicine,” he adds.

A “happiness index” survey regularly conducted by City and Guilds, the country’s largest vocation awarding body, concurs that engineering ranks in the top 10 professions, ahead of journalists, architects and the bottom ranked fields of banking, finance, nursing and IT specialists.

In the UK, beauty therapists, hairdressers and the military top the list, while a similar survey in the US suggested that industrial engineering was among the top 10 occupation for general happiness in a league table topped by the clergy and firefighters.

And with pay and career prospects in the financial services sector also looking relatively less attractive, the starting salaries on offer to graduates in engineering-related fields are looking increasingly competitive.

Yet the low prestige associated with engineering in the UK, compared with that commanded in continental Europe continues to weigh on the sector.

But Sir Anthony Cleaver, chairman of Engineering¬UK, remarks in the forward of its latest report, 85 per cent of the general public claim they would recommend engineering as a career to family and friends, up 15 per cent on the previous year.

Yet he concedes that research also show that, when 11- to 16-year-olds were asked how desirable they believed engineering is as a career, only 15 per cent were enthusiastic.

While industrial and policy leaders such as Sir James seek ways encourage young people into the field to plug an anticipated skills gap, Sir Anthony accepts that “we still have a long way to go”.



Michael Kavanagh, Financial Times
24 June 2010
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