The engineering and manufacturing industry continues to undergo profound structural change involving the take up of new technology and significant upskilling. Massive output growth in sectors such as electronics have fuelled a need to increase the numbers of professional engineers and graduate level technicians to fill gaps in skills needs across the whole sector. Trends also show a requirement to increase higher level engineering/technical skills. Considerable numbers of new recruits are needed throughout the sector to enable it to adapt to these new requirements. With a shortfall of 10,000 Advanced Modern Apprentices in the sector, there is a particular need for NTOs and their partner organisations to promote work based training vigorously to young people.