A workforce for the maritime economy and the defence industry is the condition that links all the ambitious programmes discussed at this forum — from fleet modernisation through nuclear and offshore to the defence sector — and the one most often underestimated in schedules. You can order a ship, sign a contract for a reactor and designate an area for a wind farm. You cannot order a certified welder or an officer with ten years’ experience.
The coming decade will be a decade of workforce deficit, and the panel confronts this directly. We talk about future competencies and how to define them in industries where the education cycle lasts longer than the technology cycle. We discuss the state of technical education, the condition of vocational schooling and whether universities and schools genuinely cooperate with employers or merely declare cooperation in agreements.
Competition for specialists is real — and being lost. The defence sector and the maritime economy compete for the same people with IT, logistics and civilian industry, often losing not on pay but on flexibility, image and the length of recruitment procedures.
The discussion is grounded in data from a concrete labour market rather than general diagnoses, and leads directly into the job and innovation fair accompanying the forum. We also talk about who is missing most in these industries and why the share of women and young people remains lower than the pay conditions would suggest.