Why can't I find good HVAC or plumbing techs?

Because the supply of qualified techs is shrinking faster than demand. Nearly 600,000 skilled-trades jobs were posted in a recent year while only about 150,000 new workers entered through apprenticeships, and roughly five tradespeople retire for every two who join. Good techs exist — there just aren't enough of them, and the ones there are rarely stay on the job market long.

Is the tech shortage a pay problem?

Rarely just pay. Wages have risen and the shortage persists. The bigger drivers are demographics — an aging workforce retiring en masse — and a perception problem: in McKinsey's 2024 survey of 1,000 Americans aged 18–20, 74% perceived a stigma around choosing vocational school over a four-year university. You can't out-pay a pipeline that was never built.

How do I actually find good techs?

Stop treating hiring as a one-time search that starts when someone quits. The businesses that consistently land good techs recruit continuously and keep a warm bench of pre-screened candidates, so when a seat opens they're choosing from people they already know rather than starting from a cold job post.

Why you can't find good techs (and what the shortage is really telling you)

Why can't you find good techs?

Because there aren't enough of them, and the ones who exist don't stay on the market. This isn't a you problem — it's a supply problem. In a recent year nearly 600,000 skilled-trades jobs were posted while only about 150,000 new workers entered through apprenticeship programs, and roughly five tradespeople retire for every two who join the field. When you post a job and hear crickets, you're not failing at recruiting — you're competing for a shrinking pool with everyone else in town.

It's a demographics problem first

Nearly 40% of skilled tradespeople are over age 45, and a large share will retire within the decade.
For every 5 workers who retire out of the trades, only about 2 enter — the workforce is draining faster than it refills.
The BLS projects about 40,100 HVAC and 44,000 plumbing openings a year through 2034, most of them replacing people leaving the trade. The gap you feel locally is a national structural shortage. (The widely-quoted "2.1 million by 2030" figure from Deloitte is about manufacturing, not the trades.)

The full set of numbers — turnover, time-to-fill, shortage projections — lives in our trades hiring statistics hub and the HVAC technician shortage data. They all point the same way.

It's a perception problem second

For decades the message to young people was "get a four-year degree," and vocational enrollment fell for years as a result. The stigma is real: in McKinsey's 2024 survey of 1,000 Americans aged 18–20, 74% perceived a stigma around choosing vocational school over a traditional four-year university — and 79% said their parents wanted them to pursue college, against 5% for vocational school. That's slowly changing, but the recovery is years away from offsetting today's retirements.

What it's not

It's usually not just a pay problem. Wages have climbed across plumbing and HVAC and the shortage persists. You can raise your offer and still find nobody, because the constraint isn't the price — it's the number of qualified people who see your posting at the moment they happen to be looking. A cold job post only reaches the tiny fraction of good techs who are actively job-hunting that week.

What actually works

If the pool is small and good techs don't linger, the answer isn't a better job ad — it's a better pipeline. The owners who consistently find good techs do three things differently:

They recruit always-on, not just when a seat opens. By the time you're desperate, you're choosing from whoever's left.
They keep a warm bench. A pre-screened list of culture-fit techs means an open seat is a phone call, not a two-month search — the difference between filling a role and building a bench.
They treat recruiting like sales. Sourcing, following up, and building relationships with people who aren't looking yet — because the best techs almost never are.

That's the whole idea behind HireAligned: we run always-on recruiting for plumbing and HVAC businesses so you've got vetted techs waiting instead of a job post that echoes. See how it works.