Our sectors are innovative, entrepreneurial hubs of world-leading advanced manufacturing and digital services, with a wealth of opportunity within them.

As industries, we can rely too heavily on the number of jobs we provide – it’s easily done, when across aerospace, defence, security, and space, that’s currently over 440,000. ADS figures show that our sectors pay well above the economy average, but with PwC highlighting that opportunities to learn new skills now outweigh pay for most workers considering a move, that’s not enough.

That’s why we’ve launched the Quality Jobs Index, a dataset that goes one step further and asks an important question: what actually makes a quality job, and are we providing them? 

What is the Quality Jobs Index?

The ADS Quality Jobs Index is the UK’s first national league table of job quality, comparing roles across the economy on a like-for-like basis. It provides a consistent, comparable way to understand whether jobs are secure, well-paid, sustainable, and offer long-term prospects to people.  

Our intention is to improve transparency, highlight the successes we have, and issue a milestone that calls industries beyond our own to ensure their work offers people the best possible job.

Jobs are assessed across six recognised dimensions of ‘good work’:

  • Pay and pensions
  • Training and career development
  • Work–life balance
  • Stability and contractual terms
  • Health and wellbeing
  • Worker voice
Each job receives a score relative to the UK average (set at zero). Jobs above zero are classed as above average quality.

The inaugural findings of the Quality Jobs Index show… 

  • Aerospace ranks as the highest performing sector for job quality in the UK
  • Defence also scores well above the national average, with around six in ten defence jobs rated above average quality
  • Job quality is particularly strong in regions such as the North West of England and Scotland

High‑Quality Jobs at the Heart of UK Defence

The ADS Quality Jobs Index revealed that the UK defence sector jobs are amongst the ‘highest quality’ in the private sector, reflecting strong pay, job security and long term career prospects.

These roles are concentrated in engineering, advanced manufacturing, naval, aerospace and complex systems work – sectors that tend to score highly on job quality measures.

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the UK has had a sharp wake-up call on the need to build industrial capability to combat an ever-increasing threat environment. From technological advancements that are changing the techniques of warfare, to shifting geopolitical priorities amongst NATO allies, the UK defence industry is the critical enabler to UK security.

The Quality Jobs Index highlights defence as a high‑quality employment sector, offering well‑paid, secure roles, with an average UK salary of £41,800 and 181,500 people working across the industry.

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Delivering High‑Quality Defence Jobs in Scotland

Scotland is uniquely positioned to become a global leader in defence and advanced manufacturing. The Index shows that job quality in the defence sector in Scotland is well above the average for private sector jobs with 81% 'high-quality' jobs.

Find out more

  1. Index dependent on the availability of variables within large datasets (to allow for sectoral, occupational and geographic analysis). This limits the choice of indicators.
  2. Draws on three datasets: Labour Force Survey, Wealth & Assets Survey, Understanding Society. A smaller set of indicators are used to calculate the number of ‘high quality’ jobs (LFS data only).
  3. Each sub-index consists of a range of equally weighted data points, except ‘reward’ where salary indicators are weighted 80% and pension indicators 20%.
  4. Individual indicators are standardised using z-scores to ensure they have a proportionate effect on their sub-index. The six sub-indices are equally weighted in the overall index.

For more information, please contact economics@adsgroup.org.uk.