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Skills and Demand in Industry report 2011

IET factfile: Skills and Demand in Industry Survey 2011

The IET carries out annual surveys of businesses to gauge the state of skills in the engineering and technology sector.Engineering and technology skills and demand in industry: 2011 survey.

This is the sixth annual skills survey from the IET. The average number of engineering staff in surveyed organisations was 348 and IT staff was 31. In the engineering workforce 3% of technicians and 6% of engineers were female.

Of the organisations currently recruiting,

  • 48% reported difficulties in finding suitable senior engineers and 34% IT managers.
  • The level of planned recruitment was highest in the communications (58%) and computing and IT (53%) sectors.
  • 31% of organisations reported that new recruits did not meet reasonable expectations for levels of skill, the biggest gap being lack of practical experience.
  • 43% anticipate that they will employ more apprentices in four to five years’ time.

The most commonly cited action to address skills shortages was improving the profile and image of engineering, followed by making it cheaper for organisations to offer training.