Employer Skills Survey, 2024

In an environment where the overall number of employment vacancies has declined, employers are still finding it difficult to source the number of engineers and nurses they need, with a lack of available skills, qualifications, or experience among applicants for these graduate-level roles.

There’s a demand for non-graduate skills too – employers are finding it especially difficult to recruit chefs, vehicle technicians, and care workers.

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This is all according to the Department for Education’s Employer Skills Survey – which this year spoke to 22,712 employers across the UK. Though this is a repeating survey (currently biennial) it doesn’t really make sense to compare year on year – a large scale survey alternates with a smaller one: 2024 was the small version while 2022 (also shown on the chart above) was the large iteration.

We also learn which industries are most likely to have vacancies – and human health activities are most likely to be looking for staff by some margin: more than 15 per cent of UK vacancies in 2024 (and one in ten of all vacancies where skills shortages were experienced) were in these industries.

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Information like this filters into the thinking in Skills England which will eventually translate (at a regional and local level) into interventions in training and adult education. But for the higher education sector, the argument to be making is the need to expand engineering and nursing provision.