The future is physics

The Institute of Physics (IOP) is the professional body and learned society for physics in Ireland and the UK. It seeks to raise public awareness and understanding of physics, inspire people to develop their knowledge, understanding and enjoyment of physics and support the development of a diverse and inclusive physics community. As a charity, it has a mission to ensure that physics delivers on its exceptional potential to benefit society.

As a society we face an unprecedented array of challenges. Globally, we need to address a changing climate and a growing population, to decarbonise economies, improve healthcare and ensure water, food, and energy supplies. Domestically, Ireland needs to develop the next generation of industries to create jobs and improve productivity to safeguard citizens’ futures.

Physics has a vital role to play in tackling these issues and helping make Ireland and the UK fit for a new industrial era of science, technology and engineering, an era the IOP wants to see Ireland and the UK transformed into science superpowers.

So where does Ireland stand on the cusp of this new era? What does it need to do?

There is much opportunity but for it to be fully grasped Ireland’s physics-based businesses need supported in skills and research and development (R&D).

The IOP’s Workforce Skills Survey for Ireland and the UK found a common picture. With physics skills underpinning productive industries in both, strengthening provision of physics skills is central to ambitions to improve economic growth, prosperity, and living standards at national and local levels.

Beyond a new approach to physics in our education system the actions needed now are:

• ensuring availability of a variety of physics education and training pathways, as well as complementary transferable and digital skills development, all informed by close engagement between educators, employers, and researchers and innovators;
• incentivising employers to invest in employees’ upskilling and reskilling; and
• ensuring interventions aimed at strengthening provision of physics skills move beyond the level of STEM skills, given the distinct labour market demand for physics knowledge.

Despite preconceptions, the demand for physics spans all skills levels. High-skill-level roles are seeing the fastest growth — with the number of jobs for physical scientists, for example, growing by 40 per cent between 2010 and 2020 — more than half (53 per cent) of physics-demanding jobs do not require a degree.

Already there is significant unmet demand for physics skills, with a substantial number of physics-demanding roles at any one time, nearly 9,000 high-duration vacancies in mid-2021, having quickly recovered to pre-pandemic levels, seeming to persist in being hard to fill.

There is strong, sustained growth in demand for physics skills, particularly outside of the scientific sector, with a significant proportion of hard-to-fill vacancies being for digital, and business and finance roles, reflecting their importance, but is likely to exacerbate existing skills shortages in the coming years.

Physics-based industries (PBIs) come under many different names but includes advanced manufacturing, science and technology services, medical equipment servicing, energy sector and telecoms. Whatever the enterprises are called PBIs are a major and key contributor to Ireland and have the potential to do much more.

The IOP’s research into the impact of PBIs in Ireland shows they account for nearly 200,000 full-time employees. They contribute €29 billion to Ireland’s Gross Value Added (GVA), three times that of construction and represents 9 per cent of Ireland’s GDP. Despite contributing just under 9 per cent of national GVA, PBI investment in R&D comprises more than 40 per cent of total R&D in Ireland. The annual turnover is worth €80 billion making it double the size of retail. As many economies wrestle with a productivity challenged, the physics sector is above the Irish average. As a sector, it provides high value jobs with average employee compensation of €59,000.

In the past decade, Irish PBIs achieved 33 per cent in GVA growth, 41 per cent employment growth and 26 per cent turnover growth. With 92 per cent of the 19,994 physics-based companies being micro-sized (less than 10 employees) the opportunities for more growth, better jobs and higher productivity are there to be taken.

R&D, and its commercialisation, is the next piece to becoming science superpowers but both Ireland (1.4 per cent) and the UK (1.8 per cent) fall well below the OECD average of spending 2.4 per cent of GDP and behind key competitors such as Germany who spend 3 per cent or more. In 2021, the IOP commissioned the report Paradigm Shift analysing the R&D work of Irish and UK PBIs. It highlighted the need for more, longer-term investment sustained throughout the R&D chain with government incentives vital to achieve this.

Key performance indicators included the scale of investment, track record of securing government resources and relationships between industry and research institutions. Irish PBIs perform well on all these indicators for early-stage research but with some challenges in late-stage developments. The survey showed a strong research infrastructure and that Irish PBIs involved in R&D planned to increase their commitment, but many wanted a policy shift in government incentives to direct support and means of capital de-risking.

If Ireland is to strengthen the foundations of its future economic prosperity, to diversify and grow indigenous companies there will need to be a step change. Part of that step change must be how Ireland thinks about physics and provides full recognition of its place and role in the education system, skills development, job creation, productivity and research and development. The Irish PBIs and its research ecosystem can be the foundations for that future.

T: 020 7470 4800
E: Ireland@iop.org
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