Employer Skills Survey: 2024 (Wales report)

The Employer Skills Survey 2024 (ESS 2024) is the seventh in a series of UK-wide large-scale employer surveys and included 5,605 employers in Wales. Survey fieldwork took place between June 2024 and January 2025.

Main findings

There has been an easing of internal skills pressures and a cooling of the labour market in Wales in 2024. However, employers continue to face greater skills‑related recruitment difficulties than they did in the mid‑2010s, reflecting a pattern seen across the wider UK.

• Encouragingly, skills gaps in the existing workforce in Wales have fallen since the last survey in 2022 and are now at their lowest recorded levels for the ESS series.
• After the sharp rise in vacancies seen in 2022, the number of vacancies decreased to levels previously seen in 2015 and 2017.
• The proportion of vacancies that employers describe as difficult to fill due to applicants lacking skills, experience or qualifications (skill‑shortage vacancies) decreased from an all-time high in 2022 but remained higher than in the 2011 to 2017 period.

There has been an overall longer-term reduction in employer engagement with and investment in training in Wales, in line with UK trends. 

• There has been a gradual decline in the proportion of employers in Wales providing training in 2024 compared with the 2015 to 2019 period. 
• Overall financial investment in training has fallen in real terms compared with 2022. 
• At the same time, the proportion of the workforce trained remained similar and the total number of staff trained increased compared to 2015, meaning that employers are now spending less on training per employee and per trainee. 

Wales continues to compare favourably with other UK nations in terms of both the proportion of employees trained and the number of training days provided to staff.

The survey also provides data on areas such as apprenticeships and work placements, future skills needs, Artificial intelligence (AI), and Net Zero and breakdowns at a sector, occupation, employer size and regional level.

Note on revisions

Revisions correct statistical and methodological issues including: 

• inaccurate significance testing
• rounding errors
• incorrect or inconsistent base sizes 

They also update the narrative to: 

• ensure balanced interpretation of small or non-significant changes
• improve clarity, accuracy and consistency in the presentation and labelling of findings.

More detail is available on request.