Why skilled returners can help meet defence job targets

The government must formally recognise returnerships as the UK’s fourth national workforce pathway to meet its target of recruiting 82,000 defence and nuclear workers by 2035, a new white paper argues.

Recovering National Capability: The Missing Workforce Strategy for Delivering the UK’s Industrial Ambitions, published by STEM Returners, says the UK is missing a critical piece of its workforce strategy: a formal pathway for recovering experienced engineers and technical professionals who have temporarily left the workforce.

If the government does not reconnect with these experienced engineers and technical professionals and recover this capability, they will not meet the ambitious recruitment targets.

How returners can immediately help to bridge the skills and experience gap

The UK’s Defence Investment Plan, published in June 2026, is backed by £298 billion of investment over four years and is projected to generate almost 60,000 additional jobs.

However, analysis from Skills England and the Ministry of Defence projects that defence alone will need approximately 82,000 workers across 14 priority occupations between 2025 and 2035 – 53,000 to support growth and a further 29,000 to replace those expected to leave.

Some 87% of that additional demand will require qualifications at Level 4 or above, and 12 of the 14 priority occupations are also needed by other strategic sectors, meaning Defence cannot simply out-compete other industries for the same limited pool of people.

The Nuclear Skills Plan separately identifies a need to fill 40,000 new jobs by 2030.

Why rehiring professionals should be made easier to complement apprenticeships, graduate recruitment and upskilling

The paper argues that traditional workforce channels, including apprenticeships and graduate recruitment, cannot close today’s experience gap, however successful, because they take years to produce the experienced engineering judgement that defence and nuclear programmes need now.

At the same time, thousands of experienced STEM professionals leave the workforce every year due to caring responsibilities, redundancy, ill health, relocation or a move into non-STEM roles.

Research from the STEM Returners Index 2025, based on a survey of 1,000 STEM professionals, found that 85% have questioned whether to continue pursuing a career in STEM at all and that the return-to-work process is becoming harder, not easier, with 75% describing it as difficult, up from 65% the previous year.

Since launching in 2017, STEM Returners’ structured returnership programmes have supported more than 660 experienced professionals back into careers across defence, nuclear, energy, infrastructure and advanced manufacturing, with 96% securing permanent employment and 100% of participating employers going on to recruit further returners.

Returnerships are proven to increase work participation, bring economically inactive people back into employment, remove barriers to skilled jobs, retain national capability and widen access to strategic sectors. The paper argues that they should sit alongside apprenticeships, graduate recruitment and upskilling as a distinct way for reconnecting experienced professionals with the sectors that need them most: ‘No apprenticeship reform, however successful, can immediately solve today’s shortage of experienced professionals. Apprentices and graduates entering industry today will become tomorrow’s technical leaders. The UK’s industrial ambitions, however, cannot wait 10 years.’

Where the UK Government could help improve the return-to-work process

The white paper sets out six recommendations for UK Government action to support job returners:

• Establish capability recovery as a strategic UK workforce objective
• Formally recognise returnerships as the UK’s fourth national workforce pathway
• Introduce capability recovery targets within Defence Growth Deals
• Extend funding parity with apprenticeships and graduate schemes
• Adopt a national capability recovery measurement standard
• Extend the model to SMEs across the Defence supply chain

Photo: STEM Returners

Natalie Desty (above), Founder and Director of STEM Returners – and the paper’s author – said: “The UK has become effective at creating STEM and engineering capability. It has become far less effective at retaining and recovering that capability once careers become non-linear. Every year an experienced engineer remains hidden, outside the workforce, representing not only lost capability, insight and knowledge but lost productivity.

“We must recognise their skill and talent and give them a formal, structured way to re-enter the industries that need them now. The question is no longer whether the UK can afford to invest in capability recovery, it is whether the UK can afford not to.”

Recovering and retaining national capabilities through the return of talented professionals to the UK workforce

The paper demonstrates the value of returnerships through the decade-long partnership between STEM Returners and a major UK Defence Prime.

Since 2017, 98 experienced professionals have completed programmes, with 90% offered permanent employment and 77% still employed by the company today (Sept 2026). Collectively, these returners have retained more than 325 years of engineering, project, technical and leadership capability within a single organisation.

Almost half (49%) of returners who are still with the company have been promoted into senior roles, demonstrating that career breaks do not predict reduced long-term potential. Returners just need a structured route back in.

In his foreword, Vice Admiral (Retd) Sir Martin Connell KCB CBE, former Second Sea Lord, draws on his experience rebuilding Royal Navy workforce numbers after the pandemic: “While I was serving in the Royal Navy as the Second Sea Lord in the aftermath of the pandemic, I knew that for the Royal Navy to move from a shrinking workforce back into net growth, we had to do three things simultaneously: attract the right talent, retain our best people for longer and finally, gain access to a much wider pool of willing talent available.

“It was this last category which chimes so well with Natalie’s well-argued paper. Natalie’s proposals and practical recommendations are a great starting point for businesses, because companies and organisations which get this right are likely to reap the benefits.”

The full white paper ‘Recovering National Capability’ is available at Recovering National Capability Discussion Paper | STEM Returners