Demand is strong, and so is the competition for people. In 2025 there were 55,000 unfilled long-term vacancies in UK manufacturing, costing the economy £6bn in lost output every year Make UK – Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025. Manufacturers point to the same pressures again and again: skills shortages (75%), recruitment (36%) and talent retention (32%) sit at the top of their list of barriers to growth Barclays Corporate – Skills shortage in UK Manufacturing.
That demand is not fading. Engineering and construction occupations appear most commonly among priority occupations, many already experiencing high recruitment demand and expected to keep growing strongly GOV.UK - Skills England annual skills report 2026. Demand for key occupations will grow by nearly 25% in the next decade, with 1.8 million new priority jobs expected by 2035 GOV.UK - Landmark report sets out action to address key skills gaps (Skills England). Heat pump production sits right inside that growth story, and it's creating real factory career routes now.
Building heat pumps blends traditional manufacturing craft with newer technical and green skills. You need people on assembly lines, machinists, welders and quality inspectors, alongside controls engineers, refrigeration specialists and test technicians. Occupations in digital, adult social care, construction and engineering have the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030 GOV.UK - Assessment of priority skills to 2030 (Skills England), and engineering is where much of this factory work lives.
The hard part is the specialist mix. 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET). Heat pump work sits exactly where those two shortages meet. The shape of these jobs is shifting too: six in ten (59%) manufacturers cited automation and half (50%) cited wider digitalisation as trends changing jobs and skills needs, and 74% expect demand for cognitive and meta-cognitive skills to increase by 2030 Make UK – 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap.
Start by widening the routes in. Not every skilled production worker arrives fully formed, so build training into the plan. 40% of manufacturers are looking to upskill their existing workforce, specifically for redeployment as a result of automation and digitalisation, and that figure increases for firms with more than 1,000 employees Make UK Executive Survey 2026. Promoting from within for technical roles, then backfilling the entry-level jobs, often works better than chasing scarce specialists in the open market.
The point is simple. When demand will grow by nearly 25% in the next decade GOV.UK - Landmark report sets out action to address key skills gaps (Skills England), a slow, narrow hiring process costs you the best people and the output that comes with them.
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