Defence and security is one of the busiest corners of the UK labour market right now, and it's growing fast. MOD expenditure with industry supported a total of 272,000 direct jobs in 2023/24, an increase of 11% compared to the previous financial year, according to the MOD supported employment estimates for 2023/24. That builds on earlier momentum: the total number of MOD-supported UK jobs reached 239,000 in 2022/23, an increase of 6% on the previous financial year, as reported in the MOD supported employment estimates for 2022/23.
Demand is being pulled up further by investment. More than 1,700 new jobs are being created across the UK defence sector following at least £1.4 billion in foreign direct investment committed since July 2024, according to GOV.UK's defence dividend announcement. And this isn't a one-off spike. The defence sector continued to be an attractive employer, with surveyed recruitment growing by 17.8% in 2022, according to GOV.UK's analysis of the sector's economic contribution.
Put those figures together and you get a clear picture: more roles, more investment and more competition for the same pool of skilled people.
The growth isn't evenly spread. It clusters at the higher-skilled, senior end of the market, where qualifications and experience carry the most weight. We're seeing the same pattern across adjacent regulated sectors: in financial services, recruitment was generally for Regulatory Qualification Framework (RQF) 6+ roles, rather than RQF 3 to 5, according to GOV.UK's Temporary Shortage List Stage 2 report. In plain terms, RQF levels describe how advanced a qualification is, and demand is leaning toward the more advanced, degree-level and above end.
For defence and security, that translates into roles like systems and software engineers, cyber specialists, security-cleared project leads, aerospace and electronics engineers, and programme managers. These are the people who are hardest to find and quickest to be snapped up, which is why employers feel the squeeze most at this level.
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