Assessing the technicians skills gap and recruitment barriers: Insights from the Innovation State of the Nation Survey

This report focuses on the links between skills gaps and UK firms’ innovation activities and identifies UK businesses’ technician recruitment issues. The aim is to understand skill gaps and technician recruitment difficulties better for business innovation. Considering the wide range of technician roles across companies and industries, for clarity, we focus here on technicians as those possessing a common skillset rather than occupying a specific job role.

Data from the Innovation State of the Nation Survey (ISNS) for 2023 and 2024 has been drawn on. This includes information from 2,108 firms for the 2023 wave and 2,001 firms for the 2024 wave. The annual ISNS provides insight into UK businesses’ current innovation activities, challenges, and R&D and innovation plans. In the recruitment question, the ISNS further breaks down the skill groups that UK businesses have difficulties recruiting, which includes ‘technicians’ and ‘graduate-level technical or scientific staff’. This allows us to analyse UK businesses’ skills gaps and technician recruitment challenges across different regions, firm size bands, and sectors.

You can download the full report via the link on the right-hand side of this webpage.