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A new report from the Digital Connectivity Forum (DCF), an industry think-tank, has today been published that examines the apparently “growing workforce and skills challenges” of the telecoms sector and highlights how 200,000 UK engineers are expected to leave the workforce by 2030 – risking a future “skills cliff“. But quite a few of those may be leaving due to maturity of the full fibre broadband build.
However the report – ‘Expanding the Network‘, which covers a much wider set of telecoms related fields than just network building, notes how recorded telecoms employment fell by approximately 21,000 filled jobs between 2023 and 2024. The good news is that this largely reflects the natural tail-end of an extraordinary full-fibre build cycle, rather than declining need. But if we take a wider look across the industry, the picture is more complex.
According to the study, around 60% of UK telecoms engineers today are over 50 and the sector faces an estimated 30,000-person engineering shortfall over ten years. As many as 200,000 “engineers” across different parts of the industry are expected to leave the workforce by 2030, which sits against a graduate pipeline of 14,000 a year.