Busy, and the pressure is on the supply side. UK manufacturers name skills shortages (75%), recruitment (36%) and talent retention (32%) as their top barriers to growth, according to Barclays Corporate's 2024 analysis of the UK manufacturing skills shortage. 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, Make UK's Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025 reports.
Engineering, the discipline behind lifts and escalators, sits right at the centre of this. 76% of engineering employers struggle to recruit for key roles, with technical and specialist sustainability skills topping the list, the Institution of Engineering and Technology's 2025 skills statistics show. And the demand is set to keep climbing: engineering is among the occupations with the greatest additional employment demand between 2025 and 2030, Skills England's assessment of priority skills to 2030 finds.
Lift and escalator makers need installers, service and maintenance engineers, electrical and mechanical technicians, and design and project engineers. The wider picture tells you where to focus. Digital, engineering and construction occupations appear most commonly among priority occupations, many already experiencing high recruitment demand and expected to keep growing strongly, Skills England's annual skills report 2026 notes.
Two dynamics make this harder than it looks. First, the pipeline is thin at the start: in engineering, entry-level hiring has fallen to -19% while senior hiring sits at -10%, a 9-percentage-point gap, a 2026 GOV.UK snapshot of entry-level hiring in the UK shows. Second, people are on the move: 79% of UK technical professionals plan to change employers in 2026, according to recruitment firm Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report. That churn is both a retention risk and a hiring opportunity.
Looking further ahead, the demand only grows. Demand for key occupations will grow by nearly 25% in the next decade, with 1.8 million new priority jobs expected by 2035, a 2026 Skills England report on key skills gaps projects.
Start where the talent is. For engineering, the vast majority of new hires come from the resident labour force, indicating low reliance on international recruitment, a 2025 GOV.UK review of professionals in IT and engineering finds. So your local and national candidate pool is the right place to look, and speed matters when 79% of technical professionals plan to move in 2026, as Rise Technical's 2025/26 Insights Report shows.
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