Sector on the edge: workforce survey predicts worsening rail skills crisis
Opinion
The UK rail sector is facing down an even tighter resource supply as its older workforce age out and other sectors draw experience from the middle-career population. The 2024 NSAR survey highlights just how the population pyramid is changing and its potential impacts up to 2030.
The NSAR Rail Workforce Survey surveys professionals across the rail industry, collecting workforce data from organisations across the sector. This includes information on work roles, locations, and staff demographics, allowing us to get a highly accurate picture of the rail sector’s workforce.
As a provider of specialist resource and consultancy services, WCL is committed to identifying and leading action on systemic issues facing infrastructure sectors like rail.
The 2024 survey indicates that the population pyramid of the rail industry is changing rapidly, threatening to intensify the ongoing skills crisis. Headline findings include:
A shrinking workforce
- The rail workforce is down 9.4% over the last year, with losses mainly in the supply chain
- Total workforce is now approximately 220,000
A younger workforce
- The average age of the rail workforce has dropped to 44.1 years (from 45 years old in 2023)
- Workers aged 25 and under now make up 6.3% of the workforce (up from 4.7% in 2023)
- The 31 to 49 age bracket has dropped from 50% to just under 44% in the same timeframe
Modest diversity gains
- Gender diversity has risen to 17.4% from 16% between 2023 and 2024
- The proportion of rail workers in the UK from ethnic minority groups has risen to 14.4% from 12.3% over the same period
Workforce attrition
- A third of the rail workforce are aged 50+
- Headcount loss due to retirement and other attrition sources could be as high as 90,000 over the next 5 years
What does this mean for the skills crisis in UK rail?
The rail sector is sliding down a cliff edge. The industry headcount across rail has already dropped by over 200,000 in the last year, and the drain is set to continue for the rest of the decade if we don’t change course.
Invaluable expertise and experience is being lost to retirement, while the middle-aged demographic is shrinking – most likely due to other sectors drawing talent away with greater stability or higher rates of pay. At the same time, rail’s rate of replacement is not enough to compensate.
If left unmanaged, the damaging impacts of the sector’s current skills shortage will deepen, and at an accelerating rate. At a time when the UK government is committing to greater performance on infrastructure to meet its major objectives, this could become an entrenched and critical skills crisis in the late 2020s.
Effective replacement doesn’t just require getting bodies through the door; it’s crucial that we build efficient pathways for knowledge transfer and rapid training in order to maintain sector capability.
Acting now to safeguard the future capability of UK rail
This is a wake-up call for stakeholders at every level – it’s time to take urgent action to give the sector a vital transfusion of fresh talent. The bulk of this new blood will come from previously underrepresented demographics, while the direction of travel needs to be reversed between rail and parallel sectors when it comes to headhunting.
New systems and an overhaul of our recruitment culture must sit at the heart of this transformation. Alongside this needs to be lasting improvements to upskilling and development for early career and mid-career staff in rail.
A changing population pyramid threatens to knock the wind out of the rail sector at a time when it needs to be more capable than ever. While the overall demographics of age and attrition are hard to alter, it’s still possible to avoid a skills crisis and infuse the sector with the necessary capacity. To do so, we need to recognise that tomorrow’s talent may look, work and grow differently to those that have come before.
