Our seventeenth Skills Shortage Bulletin considers the changing nature of UK skills shortages, the limitations of the system in addressing these changes, and the impact on the group most vulnerable to labour market instability – young people. With NEETs (young people not in education, employment or training) almost at a record high, our latest bulletin focuses on how to get these young people into work.
Skills shortages shape not only the labour market but young people’s futures. Edge traces how shifts in technology, training and inclusion are quietly redrawing the map of work. The Employer Skills Survey 2024 offers mixed news: fewer gaps, but less growth. Only 59% of employers now train their staff, down from two-thirds ten years ago, leaving development adrift even as demand for skills rises. The Open University Business Barometer finds 54% of employers still struggling to recruit. While most Gen Z adults choose careers in sectors where skills are needed, only a third of organisations have strategies to nurture them. Up to three million jobs could vanish from declining occupations by 2035, according to NFER’s Meeting the Skills Imperative, but the real threat is not automation itself, but our slowness in helping workers adapt.
WISERD’s Skills and Employment Survey shows how graduate-level demands have more than doubled since the 1980s. Nearly half of all jobs now require a degree, yet over a third of workers feel overqualified and our own study of the ‘middle occupations’ uncovers the quiet erosion of administrative and secretarial work. As AI automates the routine, the human becomes prized: adaptability, empathy, and digital fluency. Impetus exposes the intersectionality of what it means to be classified as NEET and the Institute for Public Policy Research finds the Apprenticeship Levy has failed as a fair first step. What’s needed is not more regulation, but a framework that opens real doors to young entrants. No wonder just 63% of young people feel sure of their problem-solving, and less than half know what employers value, according to th 2025 Youth Voice Census.
Find out much more in our Skills Shortages Bulletin 17 which, this time, comes with a special supplement, Green Skills for Scotland. In contrast to most of the news on skills, this focus on Aberdeen’s shift from oil to renewables shows how, through collaboration between educators, industry and local government, a region can reinvent itself. Green Skills for Scotland is included with the Bulletin or can be downloaded separately.