Skills England’s first annual skills report is an important milestone. It is a serious attempt to build a more strategic, evidence-based skills system, one that is better aligned to economic priorities, employer need, and future labour market demand. That matters, and it is something that we at the IMI support.
There is much in the report that reflects the direction of travel the IMI has been calling for including a more coordinated system, stronger links between skills and industrial policy, and greater recognition of how technology is reshaping jobs and training needs. Skills England’s approach is clearly designed to bring more structure and transparency to how priorities are set. But from an automotive perspective, the picture is, and continues to remain, only partial.
The first issue is visibility. Automotive appears in the framework mainly through advanced manufacturing and broader occupational groupings, rather than as a fully recognised sector in its own right. That means aspects of the workforce, particularly vehicle production and engineering, are reasonably visible, but large parts of the sector, including servicing, repair, retail and the aftermarket, are effectively pushed to the margins. Despite being essential to keeping the UK moving every day, these workers are still not being recognised with the weight they deserve.
That matters because this is not just about helping government deliver policy ambitions. Automotive is a critical service that keeps society moving. It keeps people in work, children in school, businesses trading, goods delivered and communities connected. When a vehicle is repaired, maintained and returned safely to the road, that is not a nice-to-have part of the economy, it is part of the country’s essential functioning.
If the UK is serious about net zero, future mobility and industrial competitiveness, it must also be serious about the workforce that underpins them in practice. That means recognising and investing in the entire automotive workforce, including technicians, diagnostics specialists, logistics professionals, customer-facing roles and managers, not only those in manufacturing and research and development. That has been the IMI’s consistent position, and this report reinforces why it is needed.
A second issue is how priority is being defined. The methodology places significant weight on projected employment growth between 2025 and 2035, alongside composite labour market metrics. In advanced manufacturing, priority occupations are projected to grow by 47,000 over the decade, with a further 101,000 workers needed to replace those leaving the workforce. But roles with more modest projected growth, including many technician occupations, naturally appear lower down the priority list.
This is where Skills England’s data framework starts to miss something important. In automotive, the challenge is often not rapid workforce expansion. It is persistent labour market friction with vacancies that are hard to fill, competition for skills, and retention pressures. Our analysis suggests those realities are not central to Skills England’s data model. It tells us where jobs are expected to grow, but it doesn’t show where the system is already under strain.
The same is true of how skills change within roles is understood. The report correctly recognises the impact of AI, digitalisation and hybrid technical capability. But in automotive, the issue is not just whether technician roles are growing. It is how quickly they are changing. Electric vehicles, diagnostics, software-enabled systems and new technologies are transforming what competence looks like in the workshop and beyond. That pace of change is acknowledged at a high level, but not yet fully reflected in how priorities are set.
So, our message is constructive, but clear. Skills England has made a strong start however, if this framework is to work for automotive, and therefore the UK and it’s economic and net zero goals, it must better reflect current workforce pressures, give greater visibility to technician roles, and recognise the full breadth of the sector. That includes improving how automotive is represented in data and policy, including through future SIC and SOC reforms.
Because when automotive is only partially visible, the risk is simple. The workforce that keeps the country moving safely, reliably and every single day, is still being undervalued in the system designed to support it.
Read our level 1 policy statement here.
