TL;DR

A report from the University of York, produced with Public First and the education analytics firm QS, estimates that AI adoption and upskilling could add £38 billion to Yorkshire and the Humber’s GDP by 2030 and create up to 379,000 jobs in the region. It warns that the gains depend on producing far more graduates, especially engineers. The report was launched at the Labour Party Conference and is, in part, a case for regional funding of universities, so its figures are best read as a modelled opportunity rather than a forecast.

What the report finds

The analysis draws on 750 million workforce data points. It breaks the labour market into over 40,000 skills across almost 2,000 job types, and maps the results against the growth plans of the region’s four mayoral combined authorities. Around 967,000 jobs, or 38% of the region’s employment, sit in the eight sectors named in the government’s Modern Industrial Strategy, among them digital, life sciences, defence and advanced manufacturing.

According to the report, 92% of the 280 roles judged most critical across those sectors need a degree. Engineering is the sharpest gap: the region is 2,160 graduates a year short, and 3,470 short under a high-AI scenario. Computing is short by 900 a year. A further 700 are missing in education and specialist leadership.

Across the UK, the authors put the prize at £490 billion of extra GDP by 2030, with three in four occupations in the eight sectors open to AI augmentation, provided workers are trained to use it. QS’s World Future Skills Index 2027 places the UK third of 89 economies for readiness.

The ask

The university wants the mayors of West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, York and North Yorkshire, and Hull and East Yorkshire to work with universities and employers, using devolved funding to tie higher education to regional growth plans. Joan Concannon, who leads reputation and stakeholder relations at York, pointed to the pressure of an ageing population, in which retirees now outnumber those who are economically active, and said the region must hold on to more of its graduates.

Looking forward

The picture on the ground is more cautious than the headline figure. In a BDO survey earlier this month, about a quarter of Yorkshire mid-market firms named AI as their biggest worry for the next six months, even as 41% planned to speed up AI spending. For Yorkshire businesses, the practical message in the York report is about skills supply: the engineering and computing gaps it identifies are likely to hold back AI projects long before any £38 billion shows up in the figures.