Why maintenance engineers are so hard to find right now

The advert's been up for nine weeks. You've had 30 applications. Four were from people who'd never held a spanner in a factory. Two were good on paper and stopped answering the phone. One came for interview, did well, then took a job down the road for a pound an hour more.

Meanwhile your two fitters are covering three shifts. One has already said, quietly, that they're tired.

You read the news. Everyone says the jobs market is cooling. So why can't you find one decent multi-skilled engineer?

Because the general market and your market are two different things. The headline numbers tell you almost nothing about the person you need.

The headline says plenty of people

On paper, hiring should be getting easier. ONS figures for May to July 2026 put UK vacancies at 707,000*, down 6,000 on the quarter. There were 2.5 unemployed people for every vacancy* in April to June 2026 (ONS, jobs and vacancies, August 2026).

Manufacturing itself is shrinking. The same release shows manufacturing workforce jobs down 81,000* (3.2%) between March 2025 and March 2026.

So there are people looking for work, and fewer factory jobs. You'd think fitters would be easy to come by.

They aren't, and the reason is skill.

The gap is in skills, not bodies

The government's Employer Skills Survey splits out what it calls skill-shortage vacancies. These are jobs that are hard to fill because applicants lack the skills, qualifications or experience.

In the 2024 survey, skilled trades had the highest rate of any job group. Nearly half, 48%* of skilled trades vacancies, were skill-shortage vacancies. In manufacturing as a sector, it was 34%* (Employer Skills Survey 2024).

That matches what you see in the inbox. Plenty of people apply. Very few can walk up to a stopped case packer, read the drawing, find the dead input and get it running.

A maintenance engineer takes years to make. An apprenticeship, then time on real breakdowns, then more time learning the kit on one site. You can't speed that up by putting a better salary on the advert.

Why multi-skilled is the hardest of all

Most sites don't want a fitter or a sparky any more. They want both, plus enough PLC to go online and find the missing signal.

That person is rare for a good reason. HSE's own guidance on electrical competence says an electrical apprenticeship, with some experience after it, is a good way to show competence for general electrical work. It then says more specialised work, such as control system modification, is "almost certainly likely to require additional training and experience" (HSE, electrical safety FAQs).

So the engineer who can do mechanical, electrical and controls has usually done two or three lots of training on top of the trade. There aren't many of them. Every site in your area wants the same ones. We've written about what you can realistically ask for in a multi-skilled engineer, and it's worth a read before you write the next advert.

Fewer people are being trained

The pipeline is thin, and the industry has helped thin it.

In the same survey, manufacturing had one of the lowest training rates. Only 51%* of manufacturing employers had trained any staff in the past 12 months. Only 48%* of manufacturing staff had received training, the lowest of any sector.

So the engineers you'd like to hire in five years' time aren't being made. Every site waits for someone else to train them, then tries to poach them. Most sites lose that game.

Then add the people leaving. Plenty of maintenance teams have an engineer with 30 years on the kit and a retirement date in mind. When they go, the knowledge goes too. We look at that in more detail in planning for the retirements coming.

What an open post really costs

Here's where it bites. An empty fitter post saves you a salary on paper. On the floor, it costs you more.

The two fitters left are doing three people's work. Planned maintenance slips first, because breakdowns always win. Then the breakdowns get more frequent, because the planned work slipped. Overtime goes up. Someone gets tired and takes a shortcut on an isolation.

And when the line does stop at 2am, there's nobody spare to send. Work out what an hour of that costs you. If you haven't, our guide to working out your true cost of downtime will walk you through it. Put that number next to the salary you're saving and the empty post stops looking cheap. We put more figures on it in the real cost of a vacant engineer post.

What we'd do

Here's our view. Stop waiting for the perfect hire to fix the problem.

You might find them. It could take six months. During those six months, your line still breaks down and your team still burns out. So split the problem in two.

First, cover the gap now. Line up engineers you can call in for breakdowns and shift cover, so the team you've got isn't carrying it alone. Do this before the next big stop, not during it.

Second, fix the hiring for the long run. Write an advert that says what the job really involves: the kit, the shift pattern, the pay. Look at people from other industries with the core skills. And start growing your own. An apprentice won't help you this winter. In four years, they may be the engineer you couldn't find.

What to do on Monday

1. Pull your last three months of overtime for the maintenance team. If it's climbing, you're already paying for the empty post.
2. Write down the three machines that would hurt most if they stopped tonight, and who would fix them.
3. Line up at least one outside engineer you can call for breakdowns, before you need them.
4. Rewrite the advert with the real kit, shift pattern and pay on it.

* Vacancy, unemployment ratio, workforce jobs and Employer Skills Survey figures correct as of 27 August 2026. Check ONS jobs and vacancies and the Employer Skills Survey for the latest.