Manufacturing accounts for 13.0% of North West economic output against a UK average of 9.1%, and 309,000 of the region’s 3,965,000 jobs. That makes the North West 12.6% of all UK manufacturing employment. Pay sits 4.1% below the UK median, which is the hiring advantage and the retention risk in one number.
Key takeaways
- North West manufacturing is 7.8% of regional jobs against 6.7% UK-wide, and 13.0% of regional output against 9.1%.
- Liverpool City Region advanced manufacturing employment is down 10% over five years, to 22,000 jobs. Do not plan on headline growth.
- The region is in line with England on hard-to-fill vacancies, at 15% of businesses against England’s 15%.
- North West median full time pay is £734.80 a week against the UK’s £766.60, a gap of 4.1%.
- HyNet is the one verified growth engine, with final investment decision reached and around £2bn of supply chain contracts to be awarded.
What does the regional engineering economy actually look like?
Manufacturing-heavy and productivity-light. ONS workforce jobs data for June 2026 records 309,000 manufacturing jobs in the North West, 7.8% of the regional job base against 6.7% across the UK, alongside 394,000 in professional, scientific and technical activities. Make UK puts manufacturing at 13.0% of regional output against a UK average of 9.1%, with the region accounting for 9% of UK goods exports.
The productivity picture is the counterweight. North West GDP per head was £36,926 in 2024 against £41,627 for the UK, 11.3% below, though the region recorded real GDP growth of 1.6% against the UK’s 1.1%, the joint largest increase of any ITL1 region.
Liverpool City Region carries £43bn of gross value added across 686,000 jobs, with gross value added per hour worked at £40.00, 89% of the England average. Within that, advanced manufacturing accounts for 22,000 jobs and £3.0bn of gross value added, and both are falling: employment down 10% and gross value added down 4% over five years. Wider manufacturing in the region runs to over 50,000 jobs and accounts for 15% of UK car production. The honest reading is a declining advanced manufacturing headcount inside a cluster that is 15% more productive than the UK average, which means the roles that remain are more valuable, not that there are more of them.
Who are the major engineering employers?
Verified, currently operating, with published headcounts where they exist. Unilever Port Sunlight on the Wirral employs around 2,000 people across three factories plus research and development and an Advanced Manufacturing Centre, and completed a £150m investment in May 2026 that will triple Persil capsule output and added a 10,000 square metre automated distribution centre handling up to 17,000 pallets a week with around 40 retrained employees running it. Marc Woodward, Head of Unilever UK, said of it:
“This is a landmark moment for Port Sunlight.”
AstraZeneca Macclesfield employs around 4,000 people as the company’s second largest manufacturing site, with £100m committed in April 2026 to a digital, data-driven laboratory, part of a £300m UK programme that was frozen and then resumed. EET Fuels at Stanlow employs around 750 directly and supports roughly 1,700 locally including contractors, processing 12 million tonnes of crude a year and supplying around 16% of UK road fuel demand, with about US$3bn of investment planned over five years. Encirc at Elton employs more than 900 staff plus around 130 full time contractors making roughly 2.2 billion glass bottles a year, with a £98m automated warehouse application live. Stellantis Ellesmere Port employs around 950 people as the UK’s first electric-only car plant, building about 14,500 electric vans a year, with a further £50m announced in March 2026.
Three more are worth naming with their caveats. Jaguar Land Rover Halewood has taken £500m of investment and more than 1,600 employees have completed high voltage training, though the site headcount is not published and the group announced around 4,000 global role cuts in September 2026, understood to be non-production. Cammell Laird in Birkenhead changed hands in June 2026, bought by Balaena, with the consolidated four-yard group employing more than 2,000. Bristol Myers Squibb at Moreton holds a current MHRA manufacturing licence authorised on 15 July 2026, with a 37,000 square foot research facility built for up to 200 staff. Further out, Heysham 1 and Heysham 2 are both now forecast to generate to March 2030 following EDF’s July 2026 decision, supporting more than 1,000 jobs across Heysham and Hartlepool.
What is actually in the investment pipeline?
HyNet, and it is real rather than announced. Final investment decision has been reached, contracts are signed, the North Sea Transition Authority has awarded Eni three carbon storage permits, and Eni will award around £2bn in supply chain contracts against a £21.7bn national carbon capture allocation. The project cites 2,000 skilled jobs, with Liverpool Bay storage capacity of 4.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide a year. The first two capture projects reached financial close in September 2025: Encyclis Protos at Ellesmere Port at around 400,000 tonnes a year, producing 50MW of power from non-recyclable waste, and Heidelberg Materials Padeswood at around 800,000 tonnes.
Two things in the pipeline need stating accurately because the market gets them wrong. Mersey Tidal Power has been delayed two years, with planning submission moved from 2026 to 2028 and the investment decision to 2030, so it is not imminent. The UK’s first small modular reactors are going to Wylfa on Anglesey, confirmed in November 2025, which is a cross-border opportunity from Cheshire and the Wirral rather than a North West siting decision. There is no battery gigafactory in the North West.
What is new is the governance. Liverpool City Region launched its Industrial Strategy Zone in March 2026, bringing together the Life Sciences Innovation Zone and the Freeport across six tax sites including Wirral Waters, Parkside in St Helens and Sci-Tech Daresbury, with £185m of government funding, alongside a £2bn Investment Fund launched on 10 March 2026. Cheshire and Warrington Combined Authority was legally established on 24 February 2026, chaired by Cllr Louise Gittins, with the first mayoral election in May 2027 and adult skills funding devolving in April 2027. The former Cheshire and Warrington Local Enterprise Partnership now trades as Enterprise Cheshire and Warrington.
Is the North West harder to recruit in than the rest of England?
No, and claiming otherwise is not supported. Employer Skills Survey data shows 15% of Liverpool City Region businesses and 14% of North West businesses reporting at least one hard-to-fill vacancy, against 15% for England. Skill-shortage vacancies run at 10% across all three. Only the skill gap measure is modestly above England, at 17% for the city region and 16% for the North West against 15%.
Where the regional evidence is specific is on progression rather than volume. The Local Skills Improvement Plan published in July 2026 by Liverpool Chamber of Commerce as employer representative body records employers struggling to progress staff from operative grades into technician, maintenance engineering and supervisory roles at Levels 2 to 6, and wanting combined mechanical, electrical and digital skills including programming and maintaining automated systems. New entrants are reported as lacking experience of real production environments, safety standards and quality expectations.
Sentiment, by contrast, is the strongest in the country. MHA’s 2026 Manufacturing Report, surveying 141 North West executives within a national sample of 1,000, found 90% expecting growth above 3% over the next 12 months, up from 76% in 2025, making the North West the most optimistic UK region, with 50.4% expecting growth above 5%. Only 15% plan to reduce headcount, down from 21%, and 51% are prioritising investment in new technology including artificial intelligence. Andrew Matthews, Partner at MHA, said:
“Manufacturers remain optimistic, but that optimism is grounded in reality.”
What should you pay, and how far will candidates travel?
North West median gross weekly pay for full time employees was £734.80 on a residence basis in April 2025, against £766.60 for the UK, a gap of 4.1% on an Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings sample of 174,000. Set against the city region’s advanced manufacturing cluster being 15% more productive than the UK average, that is a below-average wage base supporting above-average-productivity work, which is the regional argument worth making to a head office. Trends reshaping technical engineering hiring are narrowing that differential faster in contract than in permanent roles.
Catchment is genuinely wide and the crossings are the constraint. Mersey Tunnel tolls from 1 April 2026 are £2.40 for a Class 1 vehicle, with a £1.60 prepaid rate for Liverpool City Region residents that applies to personal rather than business travel, so it does not cover a company vehicle commute. Across the Mersey Gateway and Silver Jubilee bridges, the first quarter of 2026 saw 6.51 million journeys, the busiest first quarter since the Mersey Gateway opened, at over 2.1 million vehicle crossings a month. Mike Bennett, Managing Director of the Mersey Gateway Crossings Board, said:
“We’re now consistently seeing traffic volumes over the two million vehicles mark every month.”
For contract engineering across the region, who decides a contractor’s employment status determines who carries the PAYE risk, and it changes by client size.
How we recruit in the region
Our engineering recruitment desk runs from Birkenhead, which puts the Wirral, Liverpool, Ellesmere Port, Chester, Warrington and St Helens inside a single working catchment rather than four separate markets. We source across sectors rather than only from competitors, because the Stanlow and HyNet transition is moving process and chemical engineers into carbon capture and hydrogen work, and how engineers transfer skills between regulated sectors follows a pattern we already run on nuclear briefs. For food and drink manufacturers in the region, the process operator shortage on UK production lines is the constraint that shows up first.
Frequently asked questions
How big is the North West engineering and manufacturing sector?
309,000 manufacturing jobs as at June 2026, which is 7.8% of the regional job base against 6.7% UK-wide and 12.6% of all UK manufacturing employment. Manufacturing accounts for 13.0% of regional output against a UK average of 9.1%.
Is engineering employment in Liverpool growing?
Not in advanced manufacturing. Liverpool City Region advanced manufacturing employment stands at 22,000 jobs, down 10% over five years, with gross value added of £3.0bn, down 4%. Wider manufacturing runs to over 50,000 jobs and accounts for 15% of UK car production.
Does engineering pay less in the North West?
Median gross weekly pay for full time employees was £734.80 in the North West against £766.60 for the UK in April 2025, a gap of 4.1%. No engineering-specific regional figure is publicly accessible without opening the ONS regional occupation dataset.
Is it harder to recruit engineers in the North West than elsewhere?
The published evidence says no. 14% of North West businesses and 15% in Liverpool City Region report at least one hard-to-fill vacancy, against 15% for England. The regional difficulty is progression from operative into technician and maintenance grades at Levels 2 to 6.
Which investments will create engineering jobs in the region?
HyNet is the one with a final investment decision taken, citing 2,000 skilled jobs and around £2bn of supply chain contracts to be awarded by Eni. Mersey Tidal Power has been delayed to a 2028 planning submission and a 2030 investment decision, and the UK’s first small modular reactors are going to Wylfa on Anglesey.
