The supply of radio engineers-survey results

The author presents the results of a survey focused on undergraduate training. The results suggested that the total UK university output of graduate electronic engineers who are competent in radio engineering is less than 140/year, and of these, of course, many may choose other specialisations. The available supply is therefore probably less than 100 per year. The 7 responding industrial companies alone currently employ a total of 329 engineers whose work involves specialised RF knowledge, and, if it is assumed that the recruitment of RF engineers is in line with the average level of 9% of current staff, this would suggest an average annual recruitment need of 30 RF engineers for these 7 companies. This represents an unknown proportion of the total needs of UK industry, but it seems highly probable that it could be less than 30% of the total. The analysis supports the evidence of significant recruitment difficulty, but also suggests that a relatively modest increase in training levels, of say 50 RF engineers per year, would alleviate the problem