Skills England estimates that advanced manufacturing will require around 148,000 workers in priority occupations by 2035, with replacement demand accounting for more than twice the number of newly created roles.
Employment in selected advanced manufacturing occupations is projected to grow by 47,000 between 2025 and 2035, an increase of 13%. A further 101,000 workers will be required to replace people expected to leave those occupations during the same period.
The difference between growth and replacement demand alters the scale of the workforce problem. New factories, emerging technologies, and additional jobs attract most of the attention, but the larger requirement comes from maintaining the skills already needed to design, operate, inspect, repair, and manage industrial systems.
Skills England estimates annual replacement demand of about 10,100 people across the selected occupations. Over ten years, that produces a requirement more than twice the projected increase in employment, before allowing for stronger economic growth or higher than expected retirement rates.
The assessment identifies 25 priority occupations in advanced manufacturing. Nineteen overlap with at least one other priority sector, placing manufacturers in competition with clean energy, defence, digital technology, construction, and other industries seeking people with similar capabilities.
Shared occupations include electrical and electronics engineers, mechanical engineers, production and process engineers, engineering technicians, software developers, project engineers, quality assurance technicians, welders, and metalworking maintenance fitters.
These occupations depend on technical training, workplace experience, and familiarity with industrial equipment. Their supply cannot be expanded quickly through short conversion courses alone, particularly where employees must make safety critical decisions or work on complex production systems.
Six occupations are identified as more specific to advanced manufacturing, including sheet metal workers, precision instrument makers and repairers, and vehicle technicians, mechanics, and electricians. Even within these groups, employers compete with transport, maintenance, infrastructure, and engineering businesses for workers with transferable practical skills.
Current demand is already elevated. Skills England classifies 29% of the selected occupations as being in critical demand, meaning that demand is substantially higher than usual. A total of 71% are classed as either critical or elevated.
The technical capabilities associated with the occupations include inspecting and testing structures and equipment, determining project requirements, and designing technical solutions and prototypes. The list reflects the increasingly integrated nature of manufacturing work, where production knowledge, measurement, software, and engineering judgement frequently sit within the same role.
The qualification profile creates an additional constraint. Skills England expects 84% of the additional employment in advanced manufacturing priority occupations to require qualifications at level four or above. Across all priority sectors, the corresponding figure is 62%.
Higher technical qualifications, apprenticeships with substantial occupational content, and degree level engineering provision will carry much of the burden. Increasing learner numbers is only one part of the requirement, because training capacity also depends on experienced lecturers, suitable equipment, employer placements, and courses that keep pace with production technology.
Programmers and software development professionals represent the largest individual source of projected expansion demand within advanced manufacturing, with an additional 7,500 workers required by 2035. Across all priority industries, projected demand for the occupation reaches 192,200 workers.
Manufacturers cannot assume that software, data, controls, and cyber specialists will be available to factories whenever investment programmes require them. Industrial businesses increasingly recruit from the same pool as financial services, technology companies, consultancies, energy groups, and defence contractors.
Electrical engineers, electronics engineers, production engineers, and engineering technicians face similar pressure. Grid investment, electrification, automation, defence production, and infrastructure renewal are all increasing demand for people able to work across physical equipment and digital control systems.
Recent collaboration between engineering organisations has already focused on coordinating manufacturing skills provision. Work between Enginuity and the Confederation of British Metalforming, for example, has sought to align occupational standards and employer requirements more closely with industrial demand.
Regional concentrations will influence whether national training policies succeed. Advanced manufacturing employment is particularly prominent in parts of the West Midlands, with Warwickshire and Worcestershire identified as employment hotspots.
Training provision must therefore respond to local industrial structures rather than relying solely on a national list of occupations. A region with automotive, aerospace, metalworking, and machinery clusters will require a different mix of facilities and instructors from one dominated by process industries or electronics.
Large manufacturers can establish academies, sponsor university programmes, and rotate apprentices through several departments. Smaller suppliers often lack that capacity, even though they need many of the same occupations and may be more exposed when a single experienced engineer, toolmaker, or maintenance specialist retires.
The assessment sits alongside an industrial strategy that expects productivity growth to come primarily from investment and technology rather than a large increase in total workforce numbers. Automation may limit net employment growth, but it does not remove the need for skilled labour.
Instead, it changes the mix towards people capable of specifying, integrating, operating, and maintaining more sophisticated equipment. A company can purchase a robot, digital production system, or advanced inspection platform, but the investment produces little value without employees able to fit it into a stable production process.
Competition for those workers may also affect the pace of capital programmes. Projects can be delayed when companies cannot recruit controls engineers, commissioning specialists, maintenance technicians, or quality personnel, even when equipment and finance are available.
The 148,000 figure is not a forecast of 148,000 entirely new factory jobs. It measures the labour needed both to expand selected occupations and to prevent existing capability draining away as experienced employees leave.
Replacement demand is less conspicuous than a new factory announcement, but it is harder to postpone. Machinery can be delivered late and capital projects can be rephased; when specialist knowledge leaves a plant without a trained successor, the lost capability is rarely restored by the next recruitment campaign.
