The Twenty-Four
Key points
- Construction trades face significantly higher vacancy rates than the broader economy in Alberta. This gap widened post-COVID and has persisted.
- The construction workforce is aging. Over half of future hiring requirements will simply go toward replacing retirees, while the share of prime working-age tradespeople in the construction industry has been trending downward.
- Despite an encouraging uptick in apprenticeship registrations in Alberta, actual certifications granted remain low.
Alberta is on the verge of a potential investment boom. Mega projects like the Meta data center and Dow’s Path2Zero are underway. If new major projects like the Pacific Link and Pathways projects proceed, finding qualified labour may be the next challenge.
After years of underinvestment and elevated unemployment, this is a good problem to have. But it’s still a problem to be solved.
This potential bottleneck shouldn’t come as a surprise. One thing we often hear at industry events and in discussions with businesses, is that we’re already short specialty trade workers—even before the promised building boom.
Today, we dig into the existing labour market for construction workers in part two of our “Who’s going to build?” series.
Part one, released on Monday, October 5th, focused on Canada’s and Alberta’s population dynamics—namely slowing population growth and an aging workforce. We argued that we haven’t seen the full effects of aging because some of the impacts have been offset by increased labour force participation and later retirement of the baby boomer population.
Help wanted
Let’s consider the starting point—before the potential construction boom. One useful measure is the job vacancy rate—the share of vacant (unfilled) positions as a share of jobs required.
For specialty trade contractors, Alberta’s job vacancy rate was 4.3% in the second quarter of 2026 compared to 3.1% across all industries. That’s down from the 2022 peak but still well above pre-COVID levels. Nationally, there is also a gap between specialty trade and overall job vacancies, but it’s less pronounced than in Alberta.
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It’s not only specialty trades that exhibit this trend, the broader construction industry paints the same picture: these vacancies remain elevated despite a level of construction jobs that still hasn’t recovered to levels that existed in 2014—before the drop in energy investment.
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Shifting demographics in the trades
To add another dimension, let's explore the age make-up of the industry.
The share of construction workers aged 55+ has been on the rise. In August 2026 (the latest month available), the share was 18.4%. In the mid-2000s that share was around 10%.
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Are young people entering the industry?
Youth (15-24) unemployment remains stubbornly high in Alberta, at 15% as of August. Factoring in declining levels of labour force participation, the share of youth who are employed is just under 54%—close to a historic low outside the pandemic period.
A construction boom could create opportunities for youth, especially in the face of an aging workforce. The challenge will be to lure youth into the trades. Further, many youth will not have the skills and experience required for the skilled jobs available.
To answer the question of whether there is a pipeline of new and qualified workers to replace the portion of the construction industry that are nearing retirement or have already retired, we can pull on a couple resources.
First, according to the latest Statistics Canada data (2024), Alberta, Ontario, and British Columbia have driven national growth in new apprenticeship registrations, more than offsetting the declines in other jurisdictions. This is an encouraging sign. However, the number of trade certificates that have been issued to registered apprentices have not seen the same increase, in part reflecting stubbornly low completion rates.
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Second, according to BuildForce Canada, Alberta’s non-residential construction workforce faces a total hiring requirement of 42,400 workers by 2035, over half of that is just to replace older workers who are retiring. Based on their projections, the industry expects 26,900 workers under the age of 30 to enter the industry, but that still leaves the industry with an additional shortfall of 15,500 workers. This is based on a status quo forecast, without building in new growth projects that would be required to fill additional pipeline capacity.
So what?
The focus has been to build more in Canada. This is an important step, given chronically low levels of business investment. But we also shouldn’t forget the pressure this will exert on the workforce in the face of a slowing population, an aging workforce, and already-elevated job vacancies in the construction trades.
Our forecast already sees the unemployment rate edging lower, driven mainly by slowing population growth. However, we haven’t factored in the Pacific Link or Pathways projects as they have yet to reach a final investment decision. If these projects proceed, we estimate it will result in an average annual employment uplift of up to 90,000 jobs nationwide over the 2028 to 2036 period, with much of the gains coming from construction-related activity in Alberta. The Alberta economy could see a return to unemployment of around 5% in 2029 in this scenario, resulting in a much tighter labour market than observed over the last decade.
Answer to the previous trivia question: Persons Day (October 18) commemorates the day in 1929 when the decision to include women in the legal definition of “persons” was handed down by Canada’s highest court of appeal.
Today’s trivia question: When did Kim Campbell become Prime Minister?