Staffing Industry Analysts has issued its report on the Most Attractive Staffing Sectors in the UK. This report provides a holistic assessment for the relative attractiveness of investment opportunities to staffing companies wishing to expand their business to new occupational categories within the UK.

We have evaluated and compared the potential of the nine major occupational sectors in the UK staffing markets. The findings cover both commercial and professional staffing sectors, and attractiveness is identified according to 10 different criteria.

The engineering segment stands out as the most attractive overall, followed by IT and marketing/creative. The least attractive occupational segments are office/clerical and finance/accounting, according to our analysis.

Click on chart to enlarge.

Source: Most Attractive Staffing Segments in the UK

The engineering segment ranked fourth in our previous analysis conducted last year and experienced a remarkable upswing in demand over the 2017-2018 period. This segment’s strengths lie primarily in the strong growth in the temporary and self-employed workforce, as well as ongoing shortages of engineering professionals. The temporary and self-employed workforce population has grown faster than any other segment in the last two years.

The roles within engineering which temporary workforce population increased the most over the 2014-2018 period are technicians qualified in chemical and physical sciences, civil engineering and mechanical engineering; design and development engineers; quantity surveyors; and quality control and planning engineers.

However, the relative merits of each market and their strengths and weaknesses will likely differ depending on the reader’s own company culture and specific business case. With this in mind, we also provide a customisable tool, which allows for weighting of the 10 sub-components used in this analysis to better suit the user’s specific requirement.

The full report is available for EMEA corporate and CWS Council members, along with the Excel-based Sector Attractiveness Assessment Tool (SAAT). The SAAT allows users to conduct their own assessment based on the components that they perceive as most relevant to their business activities.