Labour Market Projections – 2025 To 2035
The Labour Market Projections project is a continuation of IER’s long history of work in this area – a sequence that has come to be known as “Working Futures”. However, this new project has both an extensive qualitative – in addition, to its more normal quantitative element – and there are some important developments in the quantitative modelling.
The qualitative strand will precede the modelling, providing the evidence base for scenario design. It requires a mixed-methods approach that includes a systematic literature review drawing on academic, official, think-tank and industry sources, as well as semi-structured interviews with experts from academia, industry, government and policy bodies.
Findings from the review and interviews will be synthesised thematically to identify major megatrends, highlight their impacts on labour-market structure and skills demand, and discuss policy challenges and responses. The output is a self-contained qualitative report, including an executive summary, sections on each trend, discussion of skills implications, policy considerations and references.
The results will feed into the design of scenarios to be run in the quantitative modelling in 2026 and, potentially, in further scenarios in 2027 and 2028.
As always, the quantitative strand will produce robust projections of the UK labour market, in this case from 2025 to 2035. Its macroeconomic element, carried out by Cambridge Econometrics, will involve the construction of a new model for the UK. These macro results form a picture of the economic environment within which the labour markets operate. The output will be a baseline set of economic and labour market outcomes plus a single scenario in 2026, drawing on the results of the qualitative work. Further scenarios may be carried out in the following two years.
The labour market projections will be by industry and occupation for the UK, the four nations, the nine English regions and English Mayoral Strategic Authorities/LSIP areas.
Analysis will be at SOC2020 2- and 4-digit occupational level, with breakdowns by major and sub-major groups and cross-classification with SIC2007 industries.
Projections of expansion and replacement demand by industry and occupation consistent with projected total demand will be available. Finally, the work will develop an interactive modelling tool/dashboard to explore data, vary assumptions and run custom built scenarios.
Project Team:
Derek Bosworth - Principal investigator
Project Duration:
March 2026 - December 2028
Project Funder:
