The Aerospace & Defence ecosystem covers:
- Aircraft production
- Space manufacturing and services
- Defence products and technologies
Find out more about the two LSPs in this ecosystem and their commitments below:
Challenges
The Aerospace and Defence sector has been affected by the COVID crisis and faces challenges related to digital and green transition such as focusing on sustainable aviation and achieving a carbon-neutral status in the next years. The sector must boost its competitiveness and set up attractive upskilling and reskilling solutions to attract young talent, particularly, women into the sector.
Size of the labour market
The aerospace and Defence ecosystem has around 600.000 employees in the EU.
Commitments made under the Pact for Skills
The Partnership, composed of industry representatives, associations, regional clusters, social partners and education and VET providers, is providing concrete solutions for skills forecasting, upskilling and reskilling programmes, and talent engagement and development for around 200,000 employees in the industry by 2026. Through skills forecasting, it supports collective anticipation of the skills gaps Europe will face, taking into account industry skills needs and demographic skills forecasts for the next five to ten years. It aims to upgrade upskilling and reskilling programmes to make them more attractive by better engaging and developing talent and improving the retention of skilled individuals.
For further information please refer to:
- Skills partnership for Aerospace and Defence
Challenges
The downstream space and geoinformation sector faces a number of challenges, including a gender imbalanced workforce, an aging society and a shortage of relevant skills.
Although a rich offer of academic training exists in universities, the actual offer is often focusing mainly on the upstream part of the space sector, while the downstream part, and especially the different application domains related to the space downstream and geoinformation sector are underrepresented.
The academic and vocational education and training (VET) offered is also lagging behind the evolving needs of the industry, businesses, public sector actors and society at large and is less developed and standardised than for other related sectors.
Finally, the benefits and opportunities that the sector can provide for other business areas are not fully considered, nor exploited, despite a strong and diversified downstream service industry present in Europe.
Size of the labour market
The space services industry, commonly referred to as the downstream sector, accounts for the largest share of the space economy with economic activities related to the operation and exploitation of satellite systems, providing space-based products and services to end-users.
In a recent study, "The Space Economy Report 2022" from Euroconsult, it was estimated that the share of the global space economy for the downstream sector corresponds to $377 billion. The European share was estimated at 23%, which amounts to $86.71 billion. Out of that, and considering an employee cost of about €100,000 per annum, we estimate that there are approximately 867,100 jobs in the European downstream space sector.
With a CAGR of 7.5% (conservative figure), the European downstream space sector is expected to reach a value of approximately €142.33 billion by 2030. With the same assumption of employee rate/annum, we can estimate that the sector will grow 1,423,300 jobs by 2030, namely a potential of 556.200 new jobs in the next years till 2030.
Commitments made under the Pact for Skills
The Skills Partnership for Space Data, Services and Applications will pursue equal and inclusive access to training to activate more people for the space sector labour market across different value chains (vertical sectors), particularly fostering gender equality and attracting new talents to the present and emerging space geospatial professions.
The Partnership is committed to help and guide learners in their skilling, upskilling and reskilling efforts, supporting them to access quality training. There will also be continuous exchange and cooperation among stakeholders from the academic, private and public sectors on skills development and requirements.
The Partnership will encourage citizens’ science practices and hands-on activities. This aims to enhance the value of space downstream and geoinformation applications in everyday aspects of life, while also attracting new talents to the current and emerging space geospatial professions.
Through its activities, the Space Data, Services and Applications LSP aims to promote upskilling and reskilling of 7% of the workforce each year by 2030 across the ecosystem.
For further information please refer to the Partnership's Commitments:
- Large Scale Partnership on Space Data, Services and Applications SPACE4GEO_Commitments