Britain's Lost Engineers

Oxford Intelligence Research Shows More Than Half of the UK's Workers With Advanced Engineering Skills Have Been Lost to the Industry

LONDON, December 2 - 58 per cent of the UK's most highly-trained and experienced
engineers are not using their specialist skills at work, according to new
research from Oxford Intelligence.

In the week when EngineeringUK's 2009/10 Report confirms that
Britain needs to recruit almost 600,000 engineers up to 2017 to remain
globally competitive, a new survey of advanced engineering skills across
Western Europe shows that more than 1.5 million UK engineers are not using
their specialist skills at work.

The findings are part of a survey, The Western European Location Skills
Audit(c), carried out by Oxford Intelligence, the research-led consultancy
focused on foreign direct investment strategies for governments,
international corporates and economic development agencies.

"Our study has identified a significant number of people that have
effectively been lost to our engineering sector. While we look at ways to
bring new talent into the industry, our report suggests we should be focusing
on plugging the gaps that are leading to the loss of engineering skills" said
Business Development Director, Jonathan Davidson.

The survey considers a range of factors that could be creating this gap,
including salary, gender and location-based factors. Understanding why
engineering has lost nearly 1.5M skilled people could not only help the
sector retain talent, it could also reduce the cost of expensive training
initiatives aimed at filling the void.

Davidson added "Oxford Intelligence set out to identify the current
availability of talent as well as allowing us to profile the workforce and
develop support for economic development and corporate location planning.
While we identify that 1.5 million have been lost, that doesn't mean they
can't be encouraged to come back to the sector. This could be a win-win for
the government and the industry if we could develop policies that encourage
people with an existing level of skills, training and experience to return to
the profession."

About The Western European Location Skills Audit(c)

The Oxford Intelligence Western European Location Skills Audit(c)
provides data on the available skilled workforce across eight
'hard-to-find'-skill sets in 10 key countries. The survey set out to:

Produce the first-ever overview and comparison of 'hard-to-find' skills
available in the Western European workforce

Develop a skills-mapping tool for practical application in site
selection, investment promotion and skills planning projects

Oxford Intelligence - www.oxint.com

Jon Davidson, Tel: +44(0)1672-515116