2021 Skills and demand in industry report – summary
We carry out an annual skills survey of engineering employers in the UK. In 2021 we focused on the current skills challenges employers are facing, identifying barriers to building the supply of the needed skills and the skills that will be needed in the future.
This summary document is based on the full report, which we commissioned and conducted in partnership with YouGov. The fieldwork was conducted online between 6 August and 2 September 2021. All of the business professionals who responded were drawn from the YouGov panel of over 1.8m people in the UK.
The majority of those that responded to our survey are positive about the future in terms of economic prospects. However, the skills gap is still a concern with more than half reporting shortages in skills within their own workforces.
The results of our survey are broken into five categories, exploring the impacts of Covid-19 and Brexit, skills shortages, recruitment difficulties, sustainability strategies, and new entrants to the workforce. The summary also includes key recommendations for industry, government, and academia to ensure that current and future workforce needs are met.
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