Nine in every hundred engineering jobs advertised in the UK last year were open to newcomers. The rest wanted people who already had the experience nobody is being hired to gain.
That's the finding buried in new research from Accu, a precision engineering supplier that combed through roughly 275,000 UK engineering job ads posted on Indeed over twelve months. Only 9% were entry-level. For an industry that has spent years complaining it can't find enough skilled engineers, the number sits awkwardly next to the complaint.
The shortage isn't evenly spread. In Bradford, just 30 of 685 engineering vacancies were pitched at entry level, a mere 4.4%, the worst figure anywhere in the study. Sheffield wasn't much better: 179 entry-level roles out of 2,187, or 8.2%, also below the national average. Head over the Pennines, or just up the road to Leeds, and the picture brightens: 578 of 5,534 vacancies there were entry-level, a 10.4% share. York did best of all, with 88 entry-level roles among 770 postings, a 11.4% share.
It's not hard to see why that gap matters. Apprenticeships, graduate schemes and trainee posts are the doors people walk through into engineering; close enough of them and there's nobody coming up behind the engineers already in post. Employers keep saying they can't find experienced staff. Fewer are asking where that experience is supposed to come from if so few are hired to start building it.
The research also revisits a longer-running problem: who gets through those doors in the first place. Women make up just 18% of the technology and engineering workforce in South Yorkshire, and separate Accu analysis puts the UK 28th in Europe for supporting women in STEM careers. That's despite women accounting for 40.5% of the country's STEM graduates.
"Engineering remains one of the UK's most important industries, but our findings show that entry-level opportunities aren't distributed evenly across the country," said Alastair Morris, Accu's managing director. "While cities such as York and Leeds are creating proportionally more opportunities for graduates and apprentices, places like Bradford are recruiting far fewer junior engineers.
"Building a strong engineering workforce starts with investing in apprenticeships, graduate schemes and trainee roles, while also ensuring women and girls have the support and opportunities to pursue careers in STEM. With women making up 40.5% of STEM graduates in the UK but the country ranking 28th in Europe for supporting women in STEM, there is clearly more to be done to turn interest and education into long-term careers. Without creating those pathways, we risk failing to develop the diverse and experienced engineering workforce the industry will need in the years ahead."
None of this shows up in this year's vacancy figures, of course. It shows up a decade from now, when the engineers who should have been hired as graduates in 2026 simply aren't there to promote.
Research and data supplied by Accu. The jobs analysis covered approximately 275,000 UK engineering vacancies collected from Indeed over a 12-month period using Reboot's jobs database.