Aerospace fights for young recruits as AI drains talent pool

The sector faces a record order backlog. Aerospace giants including Boeing BA.N and Airbus AIR.PA are working hard to crank out more planes, but are watching their expert engineers inching towards retirement.

Many companies in the sector scrapped feeder apprenticeship programmes that support longer-term careers in cost-saving measures a few years ago. Those have largely been replaced by entry-level jobs or graduate schemes, many of them pushed by the stalls and campaigns at this week's event.

Elsewhere at the show, there were engine-building exercises and Top Gun-like flying displays, all designed to draw young recruits in.

The competition to attract them is fierce. Other sectors requiring similar engineering skills have a lower barrier to entry and often pay higher salaries, especially in technology, experts say.

"If you're an engineer coming out of Purdue or MIT or any other of the premier aerospace engineering programmes, you might say maybe I'll go to Anthropic or OpenAI as opposed to Boeing or Airbus," said Jerrold Lundquist, consultant and managing director of advisory firm The Lundquist Group.