The Talent Drought in Aerospace & Defense

There is a phrase I keep hearing from operations leaders at aerospace and defense facilities across the Carolinas.

They say it in different ways, but the meaning is always the same:

"We cannot find the people we need — and the people we do find are not staying."

That is not a complaint about the job market in general. It is a specific, structural problem that has been building in aerospace and defense for more than a decade. In 2026, it has reached a tipping point that hiring managers can no longer manage around.

This issue is about that problem. What is driving it, where it is most acute in the Southeast, and what the organizations that are navigating it well are doing differently.

Three Numbers Before We Start

1 in 3 — Aerospace and defense manufacturing and engineering roles are held by workers aged 55 or older. (McKinsey)

3.5 Million — The projected worker gap in advanced manufacturing by 2026. (PwC / AIA)

$330 Million — The estimated cost of talent drain at a single mid-sized A&D company as experienced engineers retire. (McKinsey)

1. The Retirement Wave Is Not Coming — It Is Here

McKinsey's research is clear: roughly one-third of all A&D manufacturing and engineering roles are held by workers aged 55 or older. Deloitte adds that the retirement age and attrition rate in aerospace and defense runs almost 10% higher than the national industry average.

In the Carolinas, this is not a future risk. It is a current operating condition.

The engineering leaders who built the production systems, developed the supplier relationships, and passed AS9100 audits at facilities like Collins Aerospace, Parker Hannifin in Charlotte, and Curtiss-Wright in Davidson are aging out of the workforce at exactly the moment when demand for their expertise is at its highest.

The harder truth: unlike a production line, you cannot simply restart a skilled engineer.

The knowledge that leaves when an experienced quality or manufacturing engineer retires took 25 years to build. It cannot be rehired. It has to be rebuilt — and in the meantime, the gap shows up in audit findings, yield problems, and supplier qualification delays.

2. Southeast Expansion Is Outrunning Local Supply

Here is the compounding dynamic that makes this harder than it looks on paper: aerospace and defense in the Southeast is not in contraction. It is in aggressive expansion.

North Carolina alone has over 300 facilities in the aerospace supply chain. The Piedmont Triad is adding JetZero's $4.7B blended-wing aircraft program. The defense contractor base stretching from Fayetteville to Huntsville is running at capacity. MSI Defense Solutions, Corvid Technologies, and the broader Charlotte corridor are all growing.

Every one of those facilities is competing for the same finite pool of experienced A&D engineers.

Most of whom are already employed somewhere else.

Most of whom are not updating their resumes.

Most of whom are not responding to job postings.

Aerospace expansion in the Southeast has outpaced local labor availability. New production lines and capacity expansions are announced faster than regional talent pipelines can respond. Companies relying solely on local hiring are increasingly exposed to program delays, overtime fatigue among their best people, and quality risk.

3. The Three Roles Hardest to Fill Right Now

Not all A&D talent shortages are equal. The most acute gaps are concentrated in three specific profiles.

Quality and Compliance Leadership

AS9100 Rev D expertise, ITAR familiarity, and the ability to own a supplier quality program from incoming inspection through first article. This combination is genuinely scarce because it takes years to build and because the engineers who have it are in demand everywhere simultaneously. There is no program that produces a ready-made AS9100 lead auditor. It grows through experience at qualified facilities — and right now, every qualified facility wants one.

Mid-Level Program Management

McKinsey's A&D workforce data found that frontline and middle managers are twice as likely to leave their employer as individual contributors. The people who connect technical execution to customer commitments — who run an IPT, manage a CDRL schedule, and interface with DCSA — are the most mobile and the most competed-for engineers in the current market.

Manufacturing Engineers with Greenfield Experience

The facilities that are scaling production right now need engineers who have been through a ramp before. That experience is not available from a job board. It lives in a specific group of people, most of them currently employed, most of them not actively looking.

4. What Happens When the Role Sits Open

There is a secondary effect of A&D talent shortages that rarely gets discussed alongside the shortage itself.

When a senior engineering role goes unfilled for three to six months — which is common in today's market — the work does not disappear. It gets absorbed by the people around it.

That redistribution of load strains your best engineers first. They are the ones capable of carrying the additional work in the short term. They are also the ones with the most options.

The organizations navigating this worst are the ones who treated a long-running vacancy as a cost savings opportunity rather than a risk factor. Twelve months later, they do not have one vacancy. They have three.

One more number worth knowing: top A&D candidates in the Carolinas right now are receiving multiple offers within 10 to 15 days. Organizations running six-week interview processes are consistently losing the people they most want.

5. What the Organizations Getting This Right Are Doing

The A&D facilities in the Southeast that are hiring effectively in 2026 are not doing anything exotic. They are doing a specific set of things consistently — and their competitors are not.

Hiring for 80% competency and 20% adaptability — rather than holding out for a perfect-on-paper match that does not exist in the current market. The cost of developing the remaining 20% is far lower than the cost of the vacancy.

Compressing interview timelines deliberately — not by cutting corners on assessment, but by pre-scheduling decision-makers and committing to a decision window at the start of the process, not at the end.

Investing in succession planning proactively — identifying high-potential mid-career engineers 18 months before the senior engineer retires. The facilities that do this avoid the gap. The ones that start searching after the retirement announcement pay the highest price.

Using search partners with relationships inside the active workforce — not job boards that only surface the candidates who are already looking.

The Bottom Line

The A&D talent market in the Carolinas and Southeast is not going to ease in the near term.

The forces driving the shortage — the retirement wave, greenfield expansion, and simultaneous competition from EV and SiC players for the same engineering profiles — are structural and multi-year.

The facilities that come through this period with their production schedules intact are making deliberate decisions right now about where their engineering leadership will come from in 18 months. They are not waiting for the right person to surface. They are finding them.

If your A&D operation is feeling this gap — in quality, in program management, in production engineering — I would like to hear where it is showing up. Reach out directly.