Originally published February 25, 2025 | Last updated 2026
The skilled labor shortage is the widening gap between the number of open trade jobs and the number of qualified workers available to fill them. It is driven by an aging workforce, too few young people entering the trades, tighter immigration, and a growing skills gap. Across the United States and Canada it is delaying projects, raising costs, and making it harder than ever for remodelers to staff the work they already have.
If you have struggled to find a good carpenter, lead, or project manager lately, you are not imagining it, and you are far from alone. The businesses that keep our homes, offices, and infrastructure running are all fishing in the same shrinking pond. The good news is that the shortage is well understood, the numbers are clear, and there are concrete steps you can take now to stay ahead of it.
The Shortage by the Numbers
The scale of the gap is easiest to see in the latest industry data.
Metric | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
U.S. construction workers the industry needs to attract in 2026 | 349,000 net new (down from 439,000 in 2025, rising to 456,000 in 2027) | |
U.S. firms having a hard time filling open positions | 92% | |
Firms reporting labor shortages have caused project delays | 45% | |
Immigrant share of the U.S. construction workforce | 26.3% (a record, 2024) | |
Canadian construction hires needed by 2034 | 306,200 | |
Canada’s projected construction worker shortfall by 2034 | 34,300 |
Two numbers deserve a second look. The 349,000 figure is actually lower than the year before, but not because the shortage is easing. As ABC’s chief economist put it, most of that new-worker demand comes from retirements rather than growth. And 92 percent of contractors reporting trouble filling positions tells you this is not a niche problem. It is nearly the whole industry.
Why is There a Skilled Labor Shortage?
What This Means for Businesses
The impact of the skilled labor shortage extends far beyond hiring struggles. It leads to higher wages due to increased competition for talent, project delays as companies struggle to staff jobs, and economic slowdowns in industries that rely on a steady workforce.
Businesses that rely on skilled trades must start thinking ahead—whether that means investing in workforce development, offering better incentives, or finding new ways to source and secure top talent.
What Can Businesses Do to Stay Ahead?
With no quick fix to the skilled labor shortage, companies must take a proactive approach to workforce development and recruitment. Here’s how:
1. Invest in Training & Apprenticeships
Companies can’t wait for skilled workers to appear—they need to help create them. Partnering with trade schools, offering apprenticeships, and creating internal training programs can build a strong talent pipeline. Government incentives are often available to support apprenticeship programs, making them a win-win for businesses and workers.
2. Strengthen Compensation & Benefits
With fewer skilled tradespeople available, workers have more options. Competitive wages, healthcare benefits, paid training, and clear career growth opportunities make your company stand out. Even offering small perks, like tool allowances or flexible scheduling, can make a difference.
3. Broaden Recruitment Strategies
Companies should expand their reach beyond traditional job postings. Attending trade school job fairs, leveraging social media, and tapping into underrepresented groups—such as women in trades—can help attract new talent.
4. Improve Hiring & Retention Efforts
Streamlining the hiring process makes a big impact. Businesses that reduce hiring delays, simplify applications, and offer quick feedback to candidates have a better chance of securing top talent. Additionally, focusing on employee retention through mentorship programs and workplace culture improvements helps prevent turnover. Check out our 10 Tips to Retain Your Employees for practical strategies you can start using in your business today!
5. Leverage Recruiting Services for Faster Hiring
For companies that need skilled workers now, using a recruiting service can speed up the process. At Zephyr Connects we have created a service specific to labor positions, we call it SCOUT. This service can help businesses quickly find and hire tradespeople without the hassle of long-term commitments.
Taking the Next Step
The skilled labor shortage isn’t going away overnight, but businesses that act now can gain a competitive edge. Start by:
- Assessing current workforce gaps and future hiring needs
- Building relationships with local trade schools and apprenticeship programs
- Reviewing compensation and benefits to stay competitive
- Strengthening recruitment efforts to attract a wider talent pool
By taking proactive steps today, businesses can secure the skilled workforce they need for long-term success.
An aging, retiring workforce
The trades are getting older faster than they are being refilled. In the United States, the median construction worker is older than the overall labor force, and retirements are now the single biggest driver of new hiring demand.
Canada is on the same path. BuildForce Canada projects the industry will need to recruit 306,200 workers by 2034, and roughly 274,000 of those hires are simply to replace people who are retiring. When a large share of your most experienced people leave within the same decade, the knowledge walks out the door with them.
Fewer young people entering the trades
For a generation, students were steered toward four-year degrees and away from the trades. That created a pipeline problem: not enough new workers are coming in to replace the ones leaving. The effect shows up in the mix of the workforce itself.
NAHB found that the share of construction workers actually doing trade work fell from 71 percent in 2005 to under 59 percent in 2024. Even as the industry grows, the slice of it made up of hands-on tradespeople is shrinking.
Immigration and policy pressure
The U.S. construction industry leans heavily on immigrant labor. Foreign-born workers now make up a record 26.3 percent of the construction workforce, and about 1 in 3 workers in the skilled trades. In several trades the reliance is even higher: 57 percent of drywall and ceiling tile installers, 56 percent of plasterers, 53 percent of roofers, and 35 percent of carpenters are foreign-born. That makes the workforce sensitive to policy changes.
AGC found that immigration enforcement had already affected nearly a third of construction firms in 2025. Canada has felt a version of this too, with Statistics Canada reporting an 11.2 percent drop in immigrant trades workers between the 2016 and 2021 censuses.
A widening skills gap
Because so many young people went to university instead of trade school, a lot of job seekers simply do not have the specific training these roles require. The result is the frustrating situation many remodelers know well: open positions on one side, available workers on the other, and a mismatch in between that keeps them from connecting.
The skilled labor shortage by trade
The shortage is not spread evenly. Some trades face far more replacement demand than others. The clearest way to see it is projected job openings, the average number of positions that need to be filled each year this decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Trade | Avg. annual openings (2024-2034) | Projected growth |
|---|---|---|
Electricians | 81,000 | +9% |
Carpenters | 74,100 | +4% |
Plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters | 44,000 | +4% |
HVAC mechanics and installers | 40,100 | +8% |
Electricians top the list, with about 81,000 openings a year and 9 percent projected growth, the fastest of the group, driven by new construction, electrical upgrades, and the wiring demands of everything from EV chargers to data centers. Carpenters are close behind on volume at 74,100 openings a year. Plumbers and HVAC technicians round out the picture with strong, steady demand.
For a remodeler, the takeaway is practical: the trades you most depend on are exactly the ones the wider economy is competing hardest to hire.
What the shortage means for your remodeling business
The impact reaches well past the hiring desk. Competition for a limited pool of workers pushes wages up. Understaffed jobs run long, which is why 45 percent of firms now tie project delays directly to the labor shortage. And when projects slow across an industry, the drag spreads into the broader economy.
For your business, it means the cost of doing nothing is not zero. It is higher payroll, slower schedules, and turned-down work. Remodelers who plan ahead, by investing in their people, sharpening their offer to workers, and rethinking how they recruit, will have a real edge over those who wait for the market to fix itself.
What remodelers can do about it
There is no quick fix, but there is a proactive playbook. Here is where to focus.
1. Invest in training and apprenticeships
You cannot wait for skilled workers to appear. You often have to help create them. Partnering with local trade schools, offering apprenticeships, and building simple internal training programs all grow your own pipeline.
Government incentives are frequently available to offset apprenticeship costs, which makes it a win for the business and the worker. Some remodelers have built this into their whole model, as covered in fighting the labor shortage with in-house training.
2. Strengthen compensation and benefits
When skilled tradespeople have options, pay and benefits are how you stand out. Competitive wages, healthcare, paid training, and a clear path to grow all matter. So do the smaller signals: a tool allowance, flexible scheduling, or a genuinely good place to work can tip a decision your way.
3. Broaden your recruiting
Look beyond the same job board everyone else uses. Show up at trade school job fairs, use social media to show what working for you is actually like, and make a point of reaching underrepresented groups such as women in the trades. Newer tools can help too. Some remodelers are using AI to speed up sourcing and screening, an idea worth exploring in the ChatGPT for business webinar.
4. Improve hiring and retention
A slow, clunky hiring process loses good candidates to faster competitors. Simplify your application, cut delays, and get back to people quickly. Then work just as hard to keep the people you have.
Mentorship, a strong culture, and steady feedback prevent the turnover that quietly makes the shortage worse. Coaching can help you build those systems, which is one of the things our business coaching is designed to do.
5. Use recruiting services for faster hiring
When you need skilled workers now, a recruiting service can compress the timeline. At Zephyr Connects we built one specifically for labor positions, called SCOUT, to help businesses find and hire tradespeople without a long-term commitment. Remodelers Advantage and Zephyr Connects also teamed up on recruitment to make this easier for members.
Taking the next step
The skilled labor shortage is not going away overnight, but the remodelers who act now will pull ahead. Start here:
- Assess your current workforce gaps and your hiring needs for the next two to three years
- Build relationships with local trade schools and apprenticeship programs
- Review your compensation and benefits against what workers can get elsewhere
- Tighten your hiring process and your retention systems so you keep the people you win
Take these steps today and you put your business in a position to secure the skilled workforce you will need for the long haul.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there a skilled labor shortage?
The shortage comes from four forces hitting at once: a large share of experienced tradespeople are retiring, fewer young people are entering the trades, immigration and policy changes are tightening a workforce that leans heavily on foreign-born labor, and a skills gap leaves many job seekers without the training these roles require. Together they mean more jobs are opening than there are qualified workers to fill them.
How can businesses address the skilled trades shortage?
Focus on five things: grow your own talent through training and apprenticeships, make your pay and benefits genuinely competitive, broaden how and where you recruit, speed up hiring while improving retention, and use recruiting services when you need workers quickly. No single move solves it, but together they build a reliable pipeline instead of leaving you at the mercy of the market.
Which trades are most affected?
Demand is highest in the core building trades. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections show about 81,000 annual openings for electricians, 74,100 for carpenters, 44,000 for plumbers and pipefitters, and 40,100 for HVAC technicians through 2034. Electricians and HVAC technicians also have the fastest projected growth, at 9 and 8 percent, which are the trades remodelers often find hardest to hire.
