By Nick Litsardopoulos, Research Economist at IES.
In this blog, we will look at trends for manufacturing jobs in the areas with a strong presence of the British steel industry. To do this, we can use Adzuna’s Labour Market Intelligence portal, that displays a wide range of aggregate statistics based on all the vacancy listings Adzuna collects. The portal allows us to look at the demand for different skills across the UK and at specific locations of interest. Recent news headlines highlight the importance of the steel industry as a sovereign capability and the national security of the UK.
British Steel
British Steel’s headquarters are in Scunthorpe and we have rolling mills in Teesside and Skinningrove in the UK and in Alblasserdam in the Netherlands. All 3 UK areas are synonymous with iron and steelmaking and they’re globally renowned for their products. In March 1967, the ‘Iron and Steel Act’ brought into public ownership about 90% of British steelmaking. One of the largest investments for British Steel has been in Scunthorpe site, also known as the ‘Anchor Project’, with initial cost estimated at around £235 million at the time. On 3 December 1987 the UK Government formally announced its intention to privatise the British Steel Corporation, and since then plants have seen variations in their ownership.
In 2023 UK steel production and demand plummeted to historic lows of 5.6 million tonnes (Mt) and 7.6 Mt respectively. This is significantly below even the levels seen during the peak of the pandemic in 2020. The 2023 is a new record low of a further 6%, following 2022 which already had marked the lowest level since the Great Depression.
In December 2023, the Government finalised a plan to provide Tata Steel with a grant of £500 million exclusively for decarbonisation of its steel production at Port Talbot. This grant is part of a larger potential capital investment by Tata Steel totalling £1.25 billion. However, redundancies and limited skills-retraining availability has threatened jobs in the sector. About 2,000 Tata Steel staff have already expressed an interest in taking voluntary redundancy, but under a new deal with the Government, Tata Steel will evaluate future investment opportunities in steel in Britain and promise to retain 5,000 jobs across its UK business following the blast furnace closure job losses.
Moreover, British Steel’s owners Jingye had confirmed their intention to close the blast furnaces at Scunthorpe immediately, despite months of negotiations and an offer of co-investment from the UK government of £500 million. The Government has instructed the company’s UK management to continue the running of the plant to ensure the furnaces keep burning, together with taking emergency action to safeguard steel production in the UK.
British steel industry jobs
33,500 employees worked in the steel industry in UK in 2022. This is 5,000 less than in 2021 and amounts to 0.1% of employees. However, the steel industry jobs are highly concentrated in a handful location across the country, with half of all steel industry employees (16,600, 50.4%) work in Yorkshire and Humberside, and Wales. In a previous Adzuna blog we had discussed the risks faced by locations where jobs are highly dependent on a single employer, similar to the steel industry. Using the Adzuna’s Labour Market Intelligence we compare manufacturing jobs data for the region of Yorkshire and Humber, from two periods covering 1st Apr – 31st Mar for 2023-24 and 2024-2025. We use the SOC 2020 minor-group and unit-group information to isolate occupational skills that are closely related to the steel industry, such metal working and engineering.
When looking at the differences between the two periods in the SOC minor-group we notice that six occupations which were in demand in 2023-24 were absent from 2024-25. These are, CAD Drawing and Architectural Technicians, Managers and Proprietors in Other Services, Metal Forming Welding and Related Trades, Teaching and Childcare Support Occupations, Design Occupations, and Finance Associate Professionals. At the same time, we notice six new occupations which were absent from demand in the 2023-24 period. These are, Administrative Occupations: Office Managers and Supervisors, Elementary Security Occupations, Mobile Machine Drivers and Operatives, Elementary Cleaning Occupations, Media Professionals, and Artistic Literary and Media Occupations.
We plot the change in the demand of occupations in the manufacturing industry for the SOC 2020 minor-groups and for SOC 2020 unit-groups.
We find that it is quite telling that the demand for engineering jobs in the manufacturing industry has fallen the highest among all the occupations examined. We also find amongst the occupations with the highest decrease in demand other types of engineers and technicians, such as production process engineers, science engineering and production technicians, quality control and planning engineers, engineering technicians, IT technicians, and engineering project managers. The data also indicate a decrease in manufacturing occupations quite closely associated with jobs in the steel industry, such as Skilled Metal Electrical and Electronic Trades Supervisors, Metal Machining Fitting and Instrument Making Trades, Plant and Machine Operatives, and Metal Working Machine Operatives.
The effort towards decarbonisation reflects the industry-wide pressure to reduce carbon emissions. Steel producers are exploring electric arc furnaces and hydrogen-based production to replace traditional carbon-intensive blast furnaces. Traditional steel plants are incorporating advanced robotics, AI-driven quality control systems, and automated material handling equipment. Plants that once required dozens of workers to monitor blast furnace operations can now operate with a fraction of that workforce using centralised control systems. The direct instruction to maintain operations at Scunthorpe signals a more interventionist approach to preserving strategic industrial capacity whilst pursuing the 2030 decarbonisation goals.
The British steel industry stands at a critical crossroads, facing simultaneous challenges that are fundamentally reshaping its workforce and operations. Our analysis reveals a pronounced decline in demand for engineering roles, skilled metal trades, and machine operatives—precisely the positions historically central to steel production. This decline coincides with an accelerating shift toward automation and decarbonisation, as evidenced by the government’s £500 million grant to Tata Steel and similar investment proposals. Foreign ownership has further complicated the landscape, with major producing locations now under international control. The resulting transformation has created a troubling skills gap: traditional metallurgical expertise is being supplanted by requirements for digital literacy and systems thinking, yet retraining infrastructure remains inadequate. As plants transition to electric arc furnaces and automated production lines, thousands of workers face redundancy despite government intervention to maintain operations. This convergence of technological change, economic pressure, and environmental imperatives suggests the steel industry of tomorrow will employ fewer workers with dramatically different skill profiles.
IES is an independent, apolitical, international centre of research and consultancy in public employment policy and HR management. It works closely with employers in all sectors, government departments, agencies, professional bodies and associations. IES is a focus of knowledge and practical experience in employment and training policy, the operation of labour markets, and HR planning and development. IES is a not-for-profit organisation.
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