While many industries have felt the pressure of labor shortages, few have been hit harder than the automotive industry. The technician shortage remains a significant problem, straining the industry’s ability to meet demand and maintain a stable workforce. The TechForce Foundation’s most recent Supply, Demand & Opportunity Report makes the scale of it clear: each year, the automotive industry has roughly 70,000 technician openings but only enough new talent to fill about 50,000 of them, leaving a gap of more than 20,000 technicians annually.
On top of the shortage itself, dealerships and their service managers often don’t have the tools or time to expand the capacity of their current technicians, plan for future capacity, or understand how either one affects revenue and profitability. When the number of technicians in a service drive is already low, optimizing the staff you have becomes critical.
In this article, we’ll look at the causes of the technician shortage and what you can do about it, with key insights from our experts.
Why is there a Technician Shortage?
What caused the shortage? COVID-19 is the obvious answer, but several other factors have contributed to the current situation: retiring baby boomers, a lack of awareness about career opportunities, too few graduates from postsecondary automotive technology programs to meet demand, and the shift toward EVs and increasingly computerized vehicles.
As baby boomers retire, the industry faces an ongoing challenge to replace experienced workers with new talent. Concerns about earning a living wage can also deter potential technicians, reinforcing the stigma around trade work and narrowing the field of candidates.
Reason 1: Retiring Baby Boomers
According to Forbes, the automotive industry will see a 4% drop in technicians by the end of 2029. Over the same period, retiring baby boomers will create 100,000 job openings. The industry will need to replace those retiring technicians with new skilled workers just to maintain current workforce levels.
“The best way to sell a truck is to talk about how lousy a competitor is … The best way to really promote college hard, is to talk about how subordinate all the other opportunities are.” — Mike Rowe | Dirty Jobs
Reason 2: Lack of Career Opportunity Awareness
Becoming an automotive technician is a skilled trade, and historically it hasn’t been promoted as a viable career path in schools, which has fed a stigma around trade work. Many schools have reduced or eliminated shop classes, limiting younger generations’ exposure to automotive careers. The reality is that it’s a strong opportunity for growth, especially as the industry evolves.
School programs focused on automotive education are essential for promoting careers in auto repair and helping students see the benefits of joining the industry. Many educational institutions are now creating incentive programs like scholarships and tuition reimbursement to ease the financial burden of training. The need for dedicated programs to raise awareness and prepare students for rewarding automotive careers continues to grow.
Reason 3: Industry Transitions
As cars have advanced, they’ve grown more complex, and technicians’ skill sets have to evolve with them. Today’s vehicles include computers, batteries, and systems that didn’t exist 10 years ago, all of which require new knowledge to repair and maintain. Traditional tasks like oil changes are still part of the job, but technicians now need far more advanced skills to work on modern automotive technology. These changes are reshaping the broader transportation industry too, making skilled technicians essential to keeping today’s vehicles on the road. Staying current means ongoing training is no longer optional.
Technicians increasingly need to understand advanced coding to diagnose issues effectively. Online courses, virtual classrooms, and digital tools have become essential for preparing students for the realities of modern repair, giving aspiring technicians hands-on experience and up-to-date knowledge regardless of location, and making the path to an automotive career more accessible than ever.
What Can My Service Department Do to Combat the Technician Shortage?
There are several sustainable ways to offset the pressure of the technician shortage. It takes building a framework to attract and keep new talent, and just as importantly, maximizing the staff you already have. Bringing new training methods, technology, and awareness into the service department gives your dealership a real advantage in both efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Attract and Maintain Talent
The simplest way to attract new talent is to show your dealership is a great place to work, with a strong culture built around caring for employees. Competitive pay and good benefits help with retention over the long run. There’s an ongoing industry debate about flat-rate versus hourly pay, with many pointing out that hourly compensation can offer more predictable income and improve technician satisfaction.
In recent conversations with several major manufacturers, we’ve found that dealerships with higher profitability retain their technicians at a higher rate, because they’re able to increase pay, allocate work appropriately, and keep their staff happy.
Maximize Existing Staff
Making the most of the technicians you have while planning for the future is easier said than done. The shop environment plays a crucial role in technician productivity, providing the space and resources needed for efficient work. Technicians often balance dual roles, working on vehicles in the shop and handling administrative tasks in the office, which speaks to how multifaceted their jobs really are. In fact, technician capacity is the single largest constraint on revenue, because you can’t plan for more customers, more hours, and more parts sales without the staff to support it.
The best place to start is implementing a plan that provides enough capacity to support your service department’s revenue goals throughout the year. That plan should account for work-mix changes, new and departing technicians, pay rate changes, parts sales, and more. Equipping technicians with the latest digital tools and high-quality equipment is essential, complementing their skills, streamlining workflows, and helping the team meet the demands of a modern shop.
Increasing ELR is another lever that can lead to better technician pay, which in turn helps you retain and attract talent. The best way to maximize ELR is to align pricing compliance, the flat-rate times paid to technicians, and discount allocations.
Now that you have a clearer picture of the technician shortage and what you can do about it, the next step is yours.
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