Scotland does not have a defence skills shortage. It has a welder shortage, a fabricator shortage and an electrical technician shortage, and defence is simply the latest industry to join the queue.
That is the real message in the Scottish Affairs Committee’s report on defence skills and jobs, published on 15 September 2026. So, will the growth in UK defence spending create more engineering jobs in Scotland? Yes, but the bigger effect for most Scottish engineering employers will be more competition for the same tradespeople and engineers they already struggle to find. The committee says as much itself: the shortages in welding, fabrication and shipbuilding-related trades are mirrored in offshore wind, oil and gas, nuclear and construction, all drawing on one pool of welders, pipefitters, electrical technicians and crane drivers.
What the MPs actually found
The headline numbers are worth reading slowly. According to evidence from the trade body ADS cited in the report, Scotland’s defence sector has grown by more than two thirds to 16,250 employees. In April 2026, ADS told the committee it was monitoring 10,000 live engineering vacancies across Scotland. That is engineering alone, not every role in the sector.
The report lists acute gaps in welding, fabrication and other shipbuilding-related occupations, alongside mechanical, electrical and systems engineers, naval architects, and newer needs in software, cyber, autonomous systems and data. It also makes a point that gets less attention than it should: some defence roles carry security clearance levels that limit how far the shortage can be met through international recruitment. For a discipline like welding, where overseas hiring has filled gaps in other sectors, that closes off one of the usual escape routes.
The committee chair, Patricia Ferguson MP, put it plainly: “Unless long-standing skills shortages are addressed, this opportunity could be missed.”
The shared pool problem
Here is the part that matters well beyond the Clyde and Rosyth. A coded welder in Lanarkshire does not think of themselves as a “defence worker” or a “renewables worker”. They think of themselves as a welder, and they go where the rate, the shift pattern and the commute make sense.
When Type 26 and Type 31 frigate work, offshore wind fabrication, grid reinforcement and nuclear decommissioning all need the same tickets at the same time, the pressure does not stay inside defence. It lands on the general fabricator in North Lanarkshire, the pressure vessel manufacturer in Fife and the food and drink plant that needs a multi-skilled maintenance engineer who can also weld. Those businesses are not bidding for MOD contracts, but they will feel the pay pressure all the same.
The national data already points that way. The KPMG and REC UK Report on Jobs for September 2026 found that engineering was among the sectors where demand for permanent staff rose, even as overall vacancies fell for the 34th month running. The same survey found starting salaries rose at their fastest pace since January, which the report put down to competition for skilled workers and higher living costs. When total vacancies are shrinking and engineering vacancies are growing, the trades in the middle of that are going to cost more.
Scotland’s own engineers are already hiring
Scottish Engineering’s Quarterly Review for Q3 2026, published in late August, showed a net balance of +14% of members increasing headcount, the strongest reading since 2023. Plant and machinery firms reported +31% on staffing despite a weaker order book. Fabricators were the odd one out: order intake up by a net +25% but headcount down by the same margin, with members forecasting a return to +25% hiring next quarter.
That fabrication figure is the one to watch. A sector that has just shed people while its orders grow is a sector that will be trying to hire back exactly the welders and platers that defence and energy also want. The review also showed small firms flat or struggling while medium and large firms stayed positive. Small businesses are usually the least able to win a bidding war on pay.
The training fix is years away
The committee’s main answer is Defence Technical Excellence Colleges. The UK Government has committed £10 million towards two in Scotland, one in the east and one in the west. The committee warns that only one will go ahead unless the Scottish Government matches the funding, and that progress here has fallen behind England.
Even in the best case, a college opened in the next couple of years produces a qualified, experienced welder or electrical technician some years after that. A modern apprentice who starts in 2027 is not a fully competent coded welder in time for the current wave of work. The skills pipeline is a long-term fix to a problem that is already here.
There is also a point about who gets trained. If new provision is branded and funded as “defence”, there is a risk that smaller manufacturers outside the defence supply chain see it as something for the primes and their tier one suppliers, not for them. Given that the shortage is shared, the training should be shared too, and judged on how many people it gets into any engineering trade in Scotland, not only defence.
What this means for engineering employers in practice
None of this is cause for panic, but it does change the planning assumptions for anyone hiring engineers and skilled trades over the next two to three years.
Pay benchmarks drawn from 2024 or early 2025 are likely to be out of date for welders, fabricators, electrical technicians and maintenance engineers. Firms that only review rates when someone resigns will keep finding out the hard way.
Shift patterns and stability will matter as much as the hourly rate. Long-term naval programmes can offer something that project-based offshore work often cannot: years of predictable work close to home. Employers competing with that need to be honest about what they can offer in return, whether that is shorter travel, better rotas, a clear route to supervisor or a broader technical role.
Growing people in-house looks less like a nice idea and more like the only reliable supply. Scottish Engineering’s Q3 figures showed training intentions running at +17%, so many firms already see this. The ones who keep apprentices and improvers on even through a slow quarter will be in a better position than those who try to buy finished tradespeople from a market that does not have enough of them.
Security clearance is now a hiring consideration for a wider set of businesses. Any manufacturer that wants to move into the defence supply chain should expect clearance timescales to affect start dates, and should expect that some roles cannot be filled from overseas.
For a closer look at how these pressures play out by sector, the marine, shipbuilding and defence and manufacturing and industrial pages set out the roles most affected.
The bottom line
The defence money is real and Scotland is well placed to benefit from it. But the committee’s own evidence shows the constraint is not contracts, it is people, and those people are the same ones that renewables, nuclear, fabrication and food manufacturing are already competing for. Treating this as a defence problem will leave the rest of Scottish engineering paying for it. Treating it as a shared skills problem, with shared training and realistic pay, gives the whole sector a better chance of keeping up.
Sources
- Scottish Affairs Committee, Securing Scotland’s Future: Defence Skills and Jobs (15 September 2026): https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5902/cmselect/cmscotaf/580/report.html
- Wired-Gov, MPs warn that Scotland’s defence skills shortages must be addressed (16 September 2026): https://wired-gov.net/wg/news.nsf/articles/MPs+warn+that+Scotlands+defence+skills+shortages+must+be+addressed+16092026110500?open=
- KPMG and REC, UK Report on Jobs, September 2026: https://kpmg.com/uk/en/media/press-releases/2026/09/kpmg-and-rec-uk-report-on-jobs-september-2026.html
- Scottish Engineering, Chief Exec’s Report Q3 2026: https://scottishengineering.org.uk/chief-execs-report-q3-2026/
- The Scotsman, Hiring surges but clouds on the horizon for engineering sector (August 2026): https://www.scotsman.com/business/hiring-surges-but-clouds-on-the-horizon-for-engineering-sector-8948758
