Demand is high and supply is tight. Skills shortages are the top barrier to growth for 75% of manufacturers, ahead of recruitment at 36% and talent retention at 32%, according to Barclays Corporate's analysis of skills shortages in UK manufacturing. The scale of the gap is stark: there were 55,000 unfilled long-term vacancies in UK manufacturing in 2025, costing the economy £6bn in lost output every year, as Make UK's Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025 reports.
Engineering sits at the centre of that pressure, and hydrogen equipment build draws directly on it. Some 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list, according to the Institution of Engineering and Technology's 2025 skills statistics. That combination, technical plus sustainability, is exactly the brief a hydrogen line demands.
The brief is getting broader, not narrower. 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, according to Make UK's 2030 Skills: Closing the Gap report. Assembling and testing hydrogen systems needs people who can work across mechanical, electrical and digital controls at once.
This demand is set to keep building. Occupations in Digital, Adult Social Care, Construction and Engineering have the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030, according to Skills England's assessment of priority skills to 2030. Digital, engineering and construction occupations appear most commonly among priority occupations, many already experiencing high recruitment demand and expected to keep growing strongly, as the Skills England annual skills report 2026 sets out.
Two dynamics make the brief harder to fill. The pipeline is thin at the bottom: in Engineering, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a 9-percentage-point gap, according to GOV.UK's snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK. And the people you already have are on the move: 79% of UK technical professionals plan to change employers in 2026, according to Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report, cited by Engineering and Technology Jobs.
Start with the workforce you have. 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, according to the Make UK Executive Survey 2026. Mapping current mechanical and electrical skills to the new hydrogen brief often surfaces people you would otherwise miss.
Then look close to home for external hires. For the Engineering profession, the vast majority of new hires come from the resident labour force, indicating low reliance on international recruitment, according to GOV.UK's review of professionals in IT and engineering. That means the domestic pool is where you compete, so speed and a clear offer matter.
When the brief is broad and the pool is competitive, you need to reach the right people fast and keep the process moving. That is where we help. Our recruitment agent manages recruitment end to end for 8% on a successful hire, with no monthly fee and no upfront cost, through Reed.ai. It is built to find the right person for a specialist role like hydrogen equipment build, not just fill a seat.
If you are widening your factory brief this year, tell us the role and we will surface matched people so you can focus on the person, not the paperwork.
