Skills Needs Assessments: Introduction
Published 1 June 2026
© Crown copyright 2026
This publication is licensed under the terms of the Open Government Licence v3.0 except where otherwise stated. To view this licence, visit nationalarchives.gov.uk/doc/open-government-licence/version/3 or write to the Information Policy Team, The National Archives, Kew, London TW9 4DU, or email: psi@nationalarchives.gov.uk.
Where we have identified any third party copyright information you will need to obtain permission from the copyright holders concerned.
This publication is available at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/skills-england-annual-skills-report-and-sectoral-skills-needs-assessments-2026/skills-needs-assessments-introduction
Skills England’s vision is to build our nation’s world class skills, enabling growth and opportunity. To support this, Skills England has launched its Skills Needs Assessments (SNAs).
The main aim of these assessments is to provide a shared understanding of skills needs across the country.
Working with partners across government and beyond, we will provide an authoritative voice on the country’s current and future skills needs at national, sectoral and place-based levels. This will also allow us to co-create and refine a set of training products and solutions with employers and other partners to meet labour market and economic needs.
In September 2024, we published our first report, ‘Skills England: Driving growth and widening opportunities’, which outlined how skills can drive UK growth, along with an initial assessment of skills needs in the economy.
In June 2025, we followed this up with the ‘Skills England: Skills for growth and opportunity’ report, which summarised findings of our analysis and engagement with sectors on the growth and skills offer, and skills needs assessments for ten priority sectors.
In August 2025, we published our ‘Assessment of priority skills to 2030’, which examined the future direct employment demand across 10 key sectors critical to the government’s Industrial Strategy and Plan for Change and identified the education pathways associated with priority occupations in these sectors. These were developed in collaboration with government departments responsible for leading on each sector, using the best evidence available. This was the first time a quantitative assessment of skills needs has been made that looks across all of these sectors.
The Skills Needs Assessments will provide a overall view of current and future supply and demand for skills, map pathways from courses to occupations, and identify where current provision can be developed to meet skills needs.
These assessments will directly inform the Industrial Strategy’s Jobs Plans and underpin the government’s wider missions. By offering a shared, authoritative evidence base, the SNAs will enable government and industry to co-create solutions, target investment effectively, and ensure the skills system is responsive to sector needs.
Skills England has produced 10 sectoral Skills Needs Assessments, which concentrate on the skills needs within each of the 10 key sectors critical to the government’s Industrial Strategy and Plan for Change. Each sectoral SNA report provides valuable information to help prioritise where training can most effectively support employment in priority jobs within the sector.
This is a continued step towards supporting policymaking on skills training. The methods in this report have built upon those used in our previous ‘Assessment of priority skills to 2030’ publication.
The methods used are experimental, and we will continue to develop them further in future iterations of the SNAs.