Employer guideRead at source, 9 September 2026
HVAC Technician Shortage 2026: Where the 40,600 Openings Come From, and Why Everyone Chases Them in the Same Three Months
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 40,600 openings a year for heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers between 2025 and 2035. The occupation really is growing — 11 percent over the decade, which BLS calls much faster than average, and which works out to 48,200 more posts or about 4,820 a year. Subtract that and 35,780 openings a year, 88 percent of the total, are replacements for people leaving. That growth share is the largest of any major trade, and it is still outnumbered nearly nine to one. The part almost nobody measures is timing: employment at the contractors who employ 68 percent of these technicians climbs from a January trough to a summer peak in every non-pandemic year on record, by an average of 58,900 people since 2019. The shortage you feel in June is partly a calendar. All federal figures here were read at the Bureau of Labor Statistics on 9 September 2026.
Eighty-eight percent of the openings are people leaving
The projection everyone repeats is an openings figure, and an openings figure mixes two different problems. Some of those 40,600 are new posts that did not exist last year. The rest are seats that reopened because the person in them retired, moved to another occupation, or left the workforce. BLS publishes both halves, so the split is arithmetic rather than opinion.
| Measure | Heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers |
|---|---|
| People employed, 2025 | 440,900 |
| Projected openings a year, 2025–35 | 40,600 |
| Employment change, 2025–35 | 48,200 (11%, much faster than average) |
| Growth openings a year | About 4,820 |
| Replacement openings a year | About 35,780 |
| Replacement share of openings | 88% |
| Median pay, 2025 | $61,010 a year, $29.33 an hour |
| Lowest and highest tenth | Under $40,050 and over $95,210 |
| Typical entry-level education | Postsecondary nondegree award, then long-term on-the-job training |
This is the one trade where the growth line is worth planning around
On our measured view of the trades, welders run at 97 percent replacement and carpenters and automotive technicians at 94. HVAC runs at 88, which means roughly one opening in eight is a seat that did not exist before — the highest share in the group. Practically, that is the difference between a hiring plan that only has to stand still and one that has to grow. If your service area is adding buildings, budget for a crew that is bigger next year, not merely the same size.
The same climb, every year
Annual projections hide the thing a contractor actually lives with. Hiring in this trade is not spread evenly across twelve months, and neither is your competitors’. The monthly employment series for plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors — the industry that employs 68 percent of all HVAC technicians — has the same shape in every year that was not disrupted by the pandemic: a January floor, a climb through spring, a peak in July or August, and a slow fall back through the autumn.
Measure the climb and it is large. Between January and the peak month, the industry has added between 41,700 and 73,100 people in every full year since 2019 apart from 2020, when the spring shutdown flattened it. The average across those years is 58,900. In 2026 the industry went from 1,305,900 in January to 1,355,400 in July, the highest level the series has recorded.
Two things need saying plainly about that comparison. The industry series counts everyone a plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractor employs — plumbers, helpers, dispatchers and office staff as well as HVAC technicians — while the 40,600 counts one occupation across every industry that employs it. They are different measures and we are not adding them. The dashed line is there for scale, to make one point: the hiring this industry does in a single half-year is on the same order as everything the occupation is projected to need in a whole one, and it is compressed into the months when your phone is already ringing.
The second thing is that the climb is getting smaller. It ran above 67,000 in 2019, 2021, 2022 and 2024, then fell to 41,700 in 2025 and recovered only to 49,500 in 2026. Contractors are staffing up less aggressively for the season than they did three years ago, which is consistent with what the construction job-openings rate has been doing over the same period. A softer market does not make the seat easier to fill in June; it makes the seat you failed to fill in March more expensive.
Sixty-eight percent of technicians work for the industry that pays them least
This is the finding a contractor should sit with longest, and it does our own sales pitch no favours. Of the five largest employers of HVAC technicians, the one that employs by far the most people pays the lowest median wage.
| Where HVAC technicians work | Share of the occupation | Median annual wage, 2025 |
|---|---|---|
| Wholesale trade | 3% | $71,190 |
| Retail trade | 3% | $62,830 |
| Educational services; state, local and private | 3% | $62,520 |
| Plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors | 68% | $60,030 |
| Self-employed | 6% | Not published |
Read the two columns together and the exit path is obvious. A technician who leaves a contractor for a wholesaler is not leaving the trade; they are moving to the branch counter or the manufacturer’s field service team for about $11,000 a year more, with a van they do not have to load at six in the morning. That is not a reach problem and no amount of advertising fixes it. If your turnover is running above the trade’s norm, the honest first move is to price your own ladder against that table before you spend anything on ads.
Where advertising does earn its place is the other half of the same table. Sixty-eight percent of the people qualified to do your work are already employed by a company much like yours, they are not sitting on job boards, and the only reliable way to reach them is to put the opening in front of them somewhere they already are. That is a reach problem, and it is the one we are in business to solve.
The certification gate makes the pool smaller than the headcount
BLS records the typical entry route into this occupation as a postsecondary nondegree award followed by long-term on-the-job training, and it notes that the Environmental Protection Agency requires nearly all HVAC technicians to be certified in handling refrigerant. Whatever you think of that as policy, it has a hiring consequence worth being clear-eyed about: the number of people who could physically do the job is larger than the number who can be put in front of a customer next week. A trade with a credential gate and a multi-year training tail cannot respond to a demand spike by adding people quickly, which is precisely why the June scramble repeats. It also means the apprentice pipeline is a recruiting channel and not a fallback — we cover that separately on apprenticeship recruiting.
What reaching them costs
Across the 891 campaigns in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, the technician and mechanic role family produced applicants at a median of $13.41, with the middle half of campaigns falling between $7.40 and $23.58 and an apply rate of 16 percent, measured over 145 campaign-months. The wider skilled trades and field service sector ran a $11.89 median across 335 campaign-months. Our own MEP campaigns — mechanical, electrical and plumbing specifically — have averaged $18.60 per HVAC technician applicant, and the fuller picture of why search advertising costs so much more for this trade is on our page about HVAC technician recruiting.
Advertising buys applicants, not finished hires. How many applicants it takes you to make one HVAC hire depends on your own process — whether you screen for refrigerant certification up front, how fast a human calls back, whether you can make an offer without a second interview. That ratio varies enormously between contractors, so we do not publish a cost per hire. Put your own ratio into the calculator below and you will get a spend figure you can actually defend in a budget meeting.
Seasonal hiring plan
Work out how many technicians you have to hire this year, how many applicants that takes, and what the advertising costs at benchmark rates.
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The numbers that circulate without a source
Three figures turn up in almost every article about this trade: that the industry is 110,000 technicians short, that it faces 225,000 vacancies, and that the certified workforce is about to halve. We went looking for the primary document behind each one and could not find it. None of them is published by BLS, and where they are attributed at all it is to secondary write-ups of other secondary write-ups. We are not saying they are wrong. We are saying we could not verify them, so we have not built anything on them, and neither should your board deck. Everything above is either a BLS series you can pull yourself — the identifiers are printed on the charts — or arithmetic on those series that we have shown in full.
Frequently asked questions
Is there really an HVAC technician shortage?
There is a real and continuing need to fill about 40,600 positions a year, and the occupation is projected to grow 11 percent between 2025 and 2035, which BLS classes as much faster than average. But 88 percent of those openings are replacements for people leaving rather than new posts, so the pressure most contractors feel is churn rather than expansion. The widely quoted figures of 110,000 or 225,000 technicians short could not be traced to a primary source.
How many HVAC job openings are there each year?
The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects about 40,600 openings a year for heating, air conditioning and refrigeration mechanics and installers, on average, over the 2025 to 2035 decade. About 4,820 of those come from the occupation growing and about 35,780 from replacing people who leave it.
What do HVAC technicians earn?
The median annual wage was $61,010 in May 2025, or $29.33 an hour. The lowest tenth earned under $40,050 and the highest tenth over $95,210. Pay varies by employer type: wholesale trade paid a median of $71,190 while plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors, who employ 68 percent of the occupation, paid $60,030.
When is the hardest time of year to hire an HVAC technician?
Summer. Employment at plumbing, heating and air-conditioning contractors bottoms out in January and peaks in July or August in every non-pandemic year on record, rising by an average of 58,900 people across that stretch since 2019. Every contractor in your market is recruiting in the same window, which is why the same opening is cheaper to advertise in February than in June.
Do HVAC technicians need a certification to be hired?
BLS records that the Environmental Protection Agency requires nearly all HVAC technicians to be certified in proper refrigerant handling, and that the typical entry route is a postsecondary nondegree award followed by long-term on-the-job training. For hiring, the practical effect is that the pool of people who can be sent to a customer immediately is smaller than the number of people who could learn the work.
What does it cost to recruit an HVAC technician?
In our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, the technician and mechanic role family produced applicants at a median of $13.41, with the middle half of campaigns between $7.40 and $23.58 and an apply rate of 16 percent. Our own mechanical, electrical and plumbing campaigns have averaged $18.60 per HVAC technician applicant. Cost per hire depends on your own applicant-to-hire ratio, which is why we publish cost per applicant instead.
Should we spend on recruiting or on retention?
Look at where your leavers go. If they are moving to wholesalers or manufacturers for roughly $11,000 a year more, that is a pay and progression problem and advertising will only refill a leaking bucket faster. If they are leaving for reasons you have already addressed and your problem is that qualified technicians never see your opening, that is a reach problem, and 68 percent of the occupation is already employed somewhere they will not be browsing job boards.
Is the HVAC trade growing or shrinking?
Growing. Employment is projected to rise by 48,200 between 2025 and 2035, an 11 percent increase, which is the strongest growth rate among the major building trades. That growth share of roughly one opening in eight is the highest in the group, but it is still outnumbered nearly nine to one by replacement demand.
The seats reopen every year. Let us show you what filling them early costs.
Bring your technician headcount, your turnover rate and the market you serve. We will show you what applicant flow actually costs there, and what waiting until June costs on top.
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