Even the most conservative estimates put the current shortage of HVACR technicians at 20,000, and this number says nothing of the shortage of qualified HVACR technicians. This massive shortage, which has plagued contractors for several years, is only projected to get worse in the future. The primary reason for this lack of technical workers is that bright, ambitious, young people have been overly conditioned to think of the trades as a lesser calling compared to the more popular career paths, such as computer programming, application design, investment banking, etc. Today, it is not very often that young people with the whole of their professional lives ahead of them are seriously debating whether to enter into an executive training program at Goldman Sachs or to become a maintenance technician at their local HVAC company. Why? Because they have been brainwashed to believe the trades do not offer sexy and glamorous careers. More on that later.
I manage six wholesale distribution outlets across Colorado and Wyoming. We average 20 help-wanted advertisements on my bulletin boards from our contracting customers. These 20 companies are in need of several people. Therefore, my bulletin boards are aggregately seeking hundreds of technicians, and I am only one distributor in one of the lesser populated areas of the country. While less true in bigger cities such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, making matters worse in most cities and towns is the fact that there is, by and large, a defined population of HVACR professionals, and everyone pretty much already knows who everyone else is.