The Skills Mirage: Why Our 200,000-Strong Workforce Can’t Fill the Jobs

Working but not working. That’s the paradox facing the UK’s screen workforce. On paper, nearly 200,000 people are ready to roll. But in reality, only 60% are getting gigs and many of them are applying for jobs well below their level.

That’s not just inefficiency - it’s an industry devoid of life-giving nourishment, filled with mirages and endless hills of sand.

A new report from Ampere Analysis, commissioned by ScreenSkills and 4Skills, quietly lands one of the most important diagnoses of the year. It doesn’t shout but it exposes a hollowed-out pipeline that’s creaking under the weight of economic slowdown, regional disparity and stalled career progression. Most chilling? Much of the recent progress on diversity is in danger of being reversed.

The reports main findings show:

• The workforce is big, but underutilised

• The skills gaps haven’t gone away

• Juniors and mid-levels are drifting and DEI is going with them

• Regionally, the workforce and its challenges look very different

• We’ve built hyper-specialised talent pools that can’t flex when the market shifts

The Skills Gap Isn’t What You Think

It’s tempting to think we’re in a talent glut. Nearly 200,000 crew. Commissioning down and 60% out of work. Should be easy to find people, right?

Wrong.

What Ampere shows is that we’re facing a mismatch not a shortage. The commissioning boom of 2021-22 pushed companies to hire fast, promote faster, and skip the traditional skills development that made those roles sustainable. Now, in 2024’s downturn, we’re looking at a bulging junior-to-mid layer of the workforce that’s under-trained, under-used, and increasingly unhappy.

Many have credits. But producers no longer trust that those credits mean competence. It’s a classic case of inflation just not the economic kind.

The result? People applying for jobs they’ve outgrown on paper, but never fully learned in practice. Productions struggling to crew up with confidence. And producers defaulting to ‘the people they know’ because no one wants to take a punt in a risk-averse climate.

It’s not just inefficient. It’s driving the industry further into the quagmire.

But what of the more experienced people? Well they too can’t find work for reasons that I have written about many times before. Agesim, inflexibility on all sides and frankly the perception (and reality) that experience costs - and the budgets and produce’s cant bear it.

So what needs to be done?

Diversity on the Edge

The report makes it painfully clear: DEI progress has come largely through new entrants. But it’s those same people, the early-career cohort, who are now being cut adrift.

Ampere finds that 82% of junior workers have capacity for more work. Many are leaving the industry entirely. And if they go, so do the gains.

This isn’t theoretical. It’s structural. Senior roles still skew male. Regional producers often have to choose between hiring locally or hiring diversely, because the local pool may not reflect national targets. Social mobility is still limited particularly in editorial and post-production.

Add in tighter budgets, fewer long-running shows, a freelance-heavy workforce and the result is a retreat. A quiet retreat back to familiarity, to old hiring patterns, and to an previous, less inclusive model.

The Trouble with Too Much Expertise

Ampere lays out one of the most damning stats in the whole report: 85% of unscripted crew only work on unscripted. And it’s not just them: animation, post, VFX, editorial… most of these sectors operate in sealed compartments.

In good times, that’s fine. In bad times, it’s a trap.

When commissioners shift their genre strategy - or when the entirely new digital Industry starts to open up - the workforce can’t move with them. People aren’t trained or supported to switch lanes. They don’t have time to retrain and, can’t afford to - not when their are children mouths to feed and mortgages to be paid. The result is no financial or institutional incentive to do so.

Producers then face the paradox of oversupply and undersupply: too many people, but not the right kind, in the right places, with the right experience.

This isn’t a workforce. It’s a patchwork of one-way streets each built for a single destination, with no way to turn around.

Commissioning: The Quiet Collapse

And it’s not just on the production side of the fence. You can feel it in every pitch meeting. Commissioners are nervous. Budgets are shrinking. Risk is being surgically removed from the schedule.

Ampere found that total UK commissioning dropped by 18% from its 2022 peak. Channel 4’s commissions are down 38%. ITV and Sky are also cutting back. The BBC is leaning more heavily than ever on renewals - up from 37% to 40% in five years.

If you’re attached to a returning series, you might be fine. If you’re new? Good luck.

The problem is this: renewals don’t train the next generation. They don’t allow new talent in. They don’t create opportunities for fresh stories, new workflows, or experimental approaches to hiring.

We’re not just losing projects. We’re losing the ladders that let people climb.

A System Not Built to Flex

The word that comes to mind reading Ampere’s findings is fragility. We’ve built a workforce that can deliver at volume but only when the conditions are right. But it can’t stretch, pivot, or adapt at scale.

It’s regionally uneven. It’s deeply segmented. And it’s over-reliant on a commissioning ecosystem that no longer supports the same breadth of opportunity it once did.

Junior workers are leaving. Mid-levels feel stuck as do senior leaders. Hiring is slowing. Trust in credits is eroding. DEI is in retreat.

So what do we do?

Well, the solutions are out there. Ampere points to them:

• Regional skills programmes that reflect local labour pools

• Technical upskilling, especially for high-demand craft roles

• Cross-sector retraining to build workforce mobility

• Structured job taxonomies and shared language around competence

• On-the-job training paired with industry-funded placements

But more than anything else, this needs leadership. Not just from training bodies but from the commissioners, producers, and decision-makers who control the flow of opportunity.

Personally I am trying to build a workforce built around veterans that have served. Some will have physical challenges, others mental, but all deserve an opportunity to re-skill and help my company tell new stories with very different voices than exist in our Industry. For me, that’s what DEI really means, it’s not just about the colour of your skin, it’s about your lived experiences that make you think different. But they will need training, and that’s where bodies like ScreenSkills can help.

If you’re a leader, in a position to employ, ask yourself: are you building a team that can flex? Or just one that can survive the week?

We need to save this industry and the more voices we can add, the more likely change will happen. What are you seeing?

Are these problems showing up in your hiring? Your crewing? Your job search?

Hit reply. I want to hear from you. Let’s start a conversation and maybe, just maybe, help shape something better.