The Trades Shortage Is Also an Employer Problem - Part 1 of a 2 Part Series.

The Trades Shortage Is Also an Employer Problem - Part 1 of a 2 Part Series.

Ontario’s shortage of qualified tradespeople is not just a pipeline problem at the school level. It is also an employer participation problem, because too many small and mid-sized businesses say they need skilled workers while too few are actually training apprentices.

Across Canada, only about 18% of employers in key trades sectors report hiring apprentices, despite years of warnings about labour shortages. In Ontario manufacturing, 46% of firms do not run an apprenticeship program at all, and that rises to 56% among firms with fewer than 100 employees. Small businesses are the backbone of the trades economy, but they are also the least likely to participate consistently in training.

That contradiction matters. If employers keep saying they cannot find qualified people, but most smaller firms are not bringing new people into the system, then the shortage becomes self-inflicted as much as structural.

Small Business Gap

The numbers become even more striking when you look at smaller employers. Small establishments have much lower rates of structured training than medium and large firms, at roughly 49% versus 86% and 96% respectively. Research on Ontario employers also shows apprenticeship participation often falls in the 16% to 30% range, with the lower end tied to smaller firms.

At the same time, small firms still carry a major share of the load. Nearly half of apprentices work in firms with 5 to 49 employees, which means SMEs are essential to the system even while many avoid it entirely. That creates a fragile model where a minority of employers trains the next generation for everyone else.

Automotive Example

The automotive repair sector shows the same pattern in plain numbers. Ontario has roughly 8,900 to 9,300 automotive repair and maintenance establishments, while Skilled Trades Ontario’s open data shows 5,603 registered sponsors for Automotive Service Technician apprentices and 10,917 active 310S apprentices. That suggests a substantial share of garages still do not sponsor apprentices at all, even in one of the province’s most active service trades.

Among employers that do sponsor apprentices, the average works out to about 1.95 apprentices per sponsoring employer. Spread across all shops, however, the average drops to roughly 1.2 apprentices per establishment, which tells the real story: a smaller group of training shops is carrying the burden while many others stand outside the system.

Why Shops Hold Back

For most small and mid-sized businesses, the issue is not a lack of need. The issue is whether they can absorb the cost, supervision time, paperwork, lost productivity, and scheduling disruption that comes with training someone properly. Small employers routinely cite thin margins, uncertain workload, mentorship burden, and administrative hassle as reasons for not taking on apprentices.

One additional and significant concern, and the main topic for Part 2, is the quality of applicants entering trade apprenticeships. Many employers are frustrated by the level of pre-training, essential skills, and basic knowledge that young people bring when they start. When apprentices arrive underprepared, the mentorship burden increases, the return on investment becomes riskier, and some employers decide it is simply not worth it. That dynamic feeds directly into the training and enrollment problems we will look at next.

To summarize, this is why this issue needs to be described honestly. Ontario does not just have an apprentice shortage. It has a training participation problem, especially among smaller employers that make up much of the real economy.

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