What’s new about skills in Size & Health 2024?

by Joseph Dudley and by Heidi Thiemann

The new Size & Health report by London Economics was published last month on day one of the UK Space Conference. We were in the middle of leaving our Airbnb at the time, so it’s taken us a little while to catch up.

It’s based on 218 survey responses, plus some desk research. The dates get a bit confusing: this report, published in 2025, is Size & Health 2024 (because the survey was October to December 2024), and covers the financial year 2022/23. The survey questions aren’t listed in the report, but you can view them here.

As usual, it’s packed with interesting stats about the state of the sector, but what we care about is: what does it tell us about skills and the workforce?

Skills gaps might no longer be the top barrier to growth

Respondents are asked what their top barriers to growth are. This question has fewer options than in previous years, and ‘recruiting staff’ and ‘shortage of managerial skills/expertise’ have now been combined into ‘human capital constraints’.

Previously, skills-related challenges were the top two barriers to growth with around 40% of respondents listing them, but the new category comes in joint second at 25%, well below access to funding at 41%. [ref] It is unclear whether skills challenges have now lessened, or whether the rewording of the question has affected the responses. Let’s hope they keep it consistent next year.

Our 2023 Space Sector Skills Survey gives a breakdown of what these skills gaps are – primarily software, data, and AI, and systems engineering.

13% of respondents say that ‘Encouraging STEM uptake through education and outreach activities’ is a key enabler of growth. [ref] Our view is that this is a largely meaningless statistic. Whether encouraging STEM uptake is an enabler to growth should be based on whether it has any impact, not on whether people think it has any impact.

Take these percentage increases with a pinch of salt, because they are wildly different in most areas from the growth rates in last year’s report – space operations supposedly grew by 12% this time round compared to 67% in the previous report. Ancillary services and the in-space economy have about-faced from shrinking dramatically to exploding, while space operations and non-DTH space applications have significantly slowed their apparent growth.

These changes are almost certainly the results of issues with reporting or data gathering rather than huge swings in reality. Zooming out to look at the four reports from 2019/20 to 2022/23, we see a more sensible compound annual growth rate of 7-10% across everything except DTH broadcasting and ancillary services.

For the first time, Size & Health provides a breakdown of employment by activity rather than just high level segment, [ref] but take the specific numbers and dramatic percentage changes with an even larger pinch of salt, and view them as ballpark figures rather than accurate headcounts.

Demographics haven’t changed much

This year’s Size & Health asked about nationality, gender, age, ethnicity, disability, sexuality, and education. [ref] All were published in the final report except disability and sexuality. About 80 respondents answered optional questions about the demographics of their workforces.

The sector’s age profile probably hasn’t changed

The age breakdown of the space sector has changed a bit from last year’s report, but probably isn’t reflective of a real change as it wasn’t picked up in the Space Census.

Foreign nationals make up 13% of the workforce

The proportion of foreign nationals in space has stayed about the same, but with fewer being EU nationals this time round. This is in line with the results from our Space Census.

Gender diversity hasn’t improved

The space sector’s gender balance hasn’t really changed. Size & Health has a result that is skewed a bit more male than the 2024 Space Census, and the true number probably lies somewhere in between.

Ethnic diversity is slowly increasing

The ethnicity breakdown shows more White people than in the 2023 report, but comparing these results with our Space Census, it looks like S&H 2023 is the outlier here in oversampling Asian people, and actually the sector’s diversity is slowly increasing.

Most of the workforce have a degree

70-80% of the space workforce has a degree according to Size & Health. This is a lower percentage than we see in the Space Census (around 93%), but it is likely that the census overrepresents people with degrees.

The significant drop in both degrees and vocational qualifications compared to S&H 2023 is probably not reflective of a real change. This report shows a much higher percentage of people with an ‘other qualification’ (what these are is not mentioned) than we have seen previously.

There's no breakdown of qualification by subject this year, but we don’t expect it to have changed much.