Hiring is tight, and it has been for a while. Manufacturers now name skills shortages as their single biggest barrier to growth, with recruitment and talent retention close behind Barclays Corporate's 2024 analysis of the UK manufacturing skills shortage. Those pressures show up on the balance sheet.
In 2025 the sector carried 55,000 unfilled long-term vacancies, a gap that costs the economy an estimated £6bn in lost output every year Make UK's Industrial Strategy Skills Commission Report 2025. When roles sit open this long, lines run slower and orders slip. The question is no longer whether to fix hiring, but how quickly.
There is a wider pull on talent too. Skills England expects demand for key occupations to grow by nearly 25% over the next decade, with 1.8 million new priority jobs expected by 2035 Skills England's landmark skills gaps report. Manufacturing is competing for that talent against every other sector.
Planning agents, software that schedules production, balances demand and reacts to disruption, are landing on more UK factory floors. But adoption is early. Only 2% of manufacturers say AI is widely embedded across their operations, and more than half point to skills shortages as the main barrier to adopting it at all Make UK and The Manufacturer's 2026 report on AI, skills and the future of UK manufacturing.
That gap is exactly why scheduling and planning roles are growing. Someone has to set the rules the agent follows, check its output, and step in when reality does not match the model. Analytical roles are in high demand more broadly: IT business analysts, architects and systems designers, around 193,000 workers, sit among the occupations in critical demand this year GOV.UK's Occupations in Demand 2025 data.
Employers are also widening how they build these skills. Across AI hiring, apprenticeships have risen from 3% of hires in 2020 to 19% in 2025 the DSIT AI Labour Market Survey 2025. For manufacturers, that points to a practical route: grow planning and scheduling talent in-house rather than waiting for it to appear.
Start with the outcome, not the tool. A strong production planner reads demand signals, spots bottlenecks and communicates trade-offs to the shop floor. Those skills matter whether or not an AI agent sits underneath. Write the role around judgement and data literacy, then treat familiarity with a specific system as a bonus you can train.
Move quickly once you find the right person. Vacancies that stay open drain output, and with 55,000 long-term gaps across the sector Make UK's 2025 report, strong applicants have options. A tight process, clear expectations and fast feedback keep good people from drifting elsewhere.
Build a pipeline, not a one-off search. Apprenticeships and internal moves are proving their worth in AI-adjacent hiring DSIT's 2025 survey, and they help with the retention challenge that 32% of manufacturers already flag Barclays Corporate's 2024 findings. Grow your own planners and you rely less on a thin external market.
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