Kazakhstan’s Factory Expansion Faces a Skilled Labor Shortage

Kazakhstan plans to create tens of thousands of jobs at new factories, but lacks qualified workers. Around 200 industrial projects are scheduled to be launched in 2026, followed by new metallurgical, engineering, and chemical plants. The facilities can be built within a few years, but training the staff needed to operate them may take significantly longer. A 2025 estimate suggested the shortage of qualified workers in manufacturing, construction, and engineering-related fields could exceed 100,000. The projects planned for 2026 are worth a combined 1.7 trillion tenge, or approximately $3.6 billion, and are expected to create around 18,000 permanent jobs. The next wave of projects will require several thousand more workers. Seven new projects in ferrous metallurgy are planned for 2027–2028, creating more than 3,500 permanent jobs. Another six facilities in non-ferrous metallurgy are planned for the same period, creating more than 800 jobs. Behind those plans are facilities producing steel and ferroalloys, copper and aluminum products, trucks, road machinery, and chemicals. Kazakhstan is seeking to process more of its own raw materials domestically and export products with higher added value. For an economy that remains heavily dependent on oil, metals, and other commodities, the success of that policy will shape its prospects for further diversification. The Asian Development Bank has identified higher productivity and stronger human capital as important conditions for that transition. In March 2025, National Engineering Academy President Bakytzhan Zhumagulov said the shortage of qualified workers in construction, manufacturing, engineering and technical fields could exceed 100,000. Meanwhile, in April 2026, Science and Higher Education Minister Sayasat Nurbek warned that the gap between the specialists being trained and the needs of the economy was widening. The Ministry of Labor has pointed to another imbalance: on the Enbek electronic labor exchange in May 2025, demand for workers with mid-level qualifications exceeded supply by 16%. Tomorrow’s Factories and Today’s Labor Market The government is already trying to reshape vocational education. In 2025, 70% of state-funded college places were allocated to technical fields, including mechanical engineering, transportation, energy, IT, and construction. Kazakhstan operates a system for forecasting the economy’s labor needs, estimating demand by occupation, region, and industry several years ahead, taking into account both newly created jobs and the need to replace people leaving the labor market. These projections are intended to guide state-funded education and vocational training. The potential scale of future demand is substantial. A forecast published in 2025 estimated that the economy would require around 1.6 million workers over the following six years, including about 900,000 people with technical and vocational education. Demand for workers in skilled trades alone was estimated at more than 400,000. Construction, agriculture, and manufacturing were expected to be among the main employers. Yet the current labor market still reflects a fairly traditional pattern. Kazakhstan has a short-term vocational training program for unemployed people. Employers submit requests for the specialists they need and guarantee employment, while the state pays for their training. More than 11 billion tenge, approximately $23 million, was allocated to the...