Manan Sapkota
Aerospace has always been an industry that thinks years, sometimes decades, ahead. We forecast aircraft demand, production capacity, fleet requirements and technology investments far into the future.
I believe we need to start thinking about talent the same way.
The demand signals are already there.
Airbus’ 2026 Global Market Forecast projects demand for 42,060 new aircraft through 2045, while Boeing expects the global commercial fleet to grow nearly 80% to more than 50,000 airplanes, requiring nearly 44,000 new aircraft over the next twenty years.
And that is only commercial aviation.
Defense investment is increasing significantly, particularly in Europe. The European Union’s Readiness 2030 initiative could enable up to €800 billion in additional defense spending, including a €150 billion SAFE instrument supporting areas such as missile defense, drones and cybersecurity.
Then there is space. Government programs, national-security priorities and continued private-sector investment are creating another market competing for many of the same engineers, technicians, manufacturing professionals, cybersecurity specialists and digital talent.
When I look at these developments together, I see a question that goes beyond recruiting: Do we have enough skilled people to support where this industry is going?
Recruiting : Do we have enough skilled people to support where this industry is going?
Hiring Alone Won’t Build the Workforce Aerospace Needs
The talent market is already showing pressure.
A 2025 Aerospace Industries Association and McKinsey workforce study found continuing shortages in critical aerospace and defense skills, particularly engineering and skilled trades, while industry attrition remained close to 15%.
This is why I believe our conversation needs to move beyond simply filling open positions.
Moving experienced talent between aerospace companies may solve an individual vacancy, but it does not necessarily increase the industry’s overall capability. If commercial aviation continues expanding while defense, space and advanced manufacturing grow at the same time, companies will increasingly compete for many of the same skills.
At some point, we have to create more talent.
That is where I see a much larger opportunity for partnerships between aerospace companies and trade schools, technical colleges and universities.
Rather than engaging schools only when we have immediate hiring needs, why not work with them earlier to understand what skills will be needed three, five or even ten years from now?
"The opportunity is to become better at understanding where skills exist, where they are becoming scarce and where the business will need them next."
Industry can provide insight into changing technologies and skill requirements. Schools can help translate those needs into curriculum, certifications and hands-on training. Internships and apprenticeships can then give students earlier exposure to aerospace careers and create a more predictable path into the industry.
Europe provides an interesting example. The EU’s Aerospace and Defense Pact for Skills brings together industry, educational institutions and vocational training providers around skills forecasting, talent development, upskilling and reskilling. The aerospace and defense ecosystem represented by the initiative includes approximately 600,000 employees, with programs aimed at developing skills across a significant portion of that workforce.
I believe we need more thinking like this across the industry.
Building Talent Doesn’t Stop With Hiring
There is another part of this conversation that I believe is just as important: the people already working in aerospace.
AI, automation, digital manufacturing and data analytics are changing how work gets done. The World Economic Forum estimates that 39% of workers’ existing core skills will change by 2030.
That does not necessarily mean 39% of jobs disappear. It means the skills inside many jobs will change.
Think about an experienced aerospace technician who understands a product, its systems and its maintenance requirements after years of working with it. As digital diagnostics and AI become more integrated into the workplace, replacing that experience with an entirely new skill set may not always be the best answer.
Why not add those new capabilities to the experience we already have?
The technician of the future may combine mechanical knowledge with digital diagnostics. Engineers may increasingly combine traditional engineering expertise with AI-assisted design, simulation and data analysis. Quality and manufacturing professionals may work more closely with predictive analytics and automated systems.
This is where continuous upskilling and reskilling become part of workforce strategy rather than simply an HR or training initiative.
AI Should Change HR, Too
AI will also change Talent Acquisition and Talent Management.
Many administrative recruiting activities can become faster through automation. But I don’t believe the future value of Talent Acquisition is simply processing more candidates or filling requisitions faster.
The opportunity is to become better at understanding where skills exist, where they are becoming scarce and where the business will need them next.
Before opening every external requisition, we should increasingly be able to ask: Do we already have someone with most of these capabilities? Could that employee be developed into this role? What skills would they need? And if the talent does not exist internally, can we begin building that pipeline before the demand becomes urgent?
That connects recruiting, workforce planning, learning and development, internal mobility and succession planning in a way that historically has not always happened.
The Workforce Has to Become Part of Capacity Planning
Aerospace demand is not disappearing.
Airbus expects global passenger traffic to more than double by 2045. Boeing expects commercial aviation services alone to represent a $4.9 trillion market between 2026 and 2045. At the same time, the United States and Europe are investing heavily in defense capabilities, while space and emerging technologies continue creating new demand for technical skills.
For me, that leads to a fairly simple conclusion.
If we can forecast aircraft demand twenty years ahead, plan defense programs years ahead and invest billions in future technologies, we should be able to think further ahead about the people who will design, manufacture, maintain and support them.
The next aerospace bottleneck may not be technology.
It may be whether we can build human capability quickly enough to keep up with it. And solving that will require more than recruiting.
It will require industry, education and employees themselves to become partners in continuously building the aerospace workforce of the future.
