UK Job Market Post Brexit / Covid?

Hi,

Just curious to how the job market is for controls engineers in the UK at the moment? I'm not seeing many jobs advertised, and wondering if Brexit + Covid is hitting the manufacturing industry quite badly?

Is anyone struggling to find work? What's it like for contractors?

russg said:

Hi,

Just curious to how the job market is for controls engineers in the UK at the moment? I'm not seeing many jobs advertised, and wondering if Brexit + Covid is hitting the manufacturing industry quite badly?

Is anyone struggling to find work? What's it like for contractors?

Click to expand...

I doubt Brexit has had much of an impact on domestic manufacturing...yet.

Covid depends on the industry I suppose, the one I happen to work in we have never been busier.

I have spoken to some suppliers of motion control, and they said they'd had redundancies due to companies putting a lot of projects on hold.

But, yeah, I suppose you are right, it will depend on the industry.

What manufacturing industry ? we lost most of ours to Europe let's hope we get some back post Brexit, I know of a number of large companies that moved to Europe. We are again a nation of shopkeepers & Service companies.

Brexit and Covid are something of a double whammy that are bringing about a lot of uncertainity at the moment in the UK.

The long drawn out deal brokering did not help matters. I have no doubt that the UK will bounce back once things settle down a bit.

Covid more than Brexit.
I do a lot in the bedding industry and they have nearly ground to a halt as they can't get supplies and materials to make the beds. The chain is broken.
Ironically, their order books are full to busting.
It's frustrating as I have a great automation job to do that has been pushed back twice and now has been moved to April
Meanwhile I am twiddling my thumbs.

In the short term it's definitely Covid causing havoc. At least near me, a large SI went under at the beginning of Covid (granted, there was a bit of mismanagement where they snubbed bread and butter jobs for large scale projects that got put on hold for Covid and cash flow took them down).

In the long term, it'll be Brexit but we won't see that yet. There's too many assets to depreciate, but it won't surprise me that some industries decide it's not worth sticking around. This being said, the benefit of being out of the EU is being nimble enough to change circumstances... the issue is that we will come to the negotiating table without leverage and will likely lose something in the process.


@Ronnie, are you a one man band? Or a company that can undertake electrical works too? Also, which side of London are you?

If anybody is Southern based (M4 corridor to Reading or London based) has strong PLC and/or SCADA skills and is looking for something permanent (no contractors sorry) in a secure and thriving industry then DM me, I may be able to help.

Yeah same but in Gloucestershire - we have been looking for another controls guy for months.

There’s a divide in our business due to Covid, manufacturing SCADA and MES has slowed, although demand for remote monitoring, especially mobile friendly executive dashboards has increased. For our datacentre work the orders have grown and I’ve taken on two more people and probably looking for another SCADA person soon.
Brexit hasn’t had much of an impact.. yet.