Most employers aren’t planning to hire more people next year. Many of them still can’t fill the jobs they have. Both things are true at once, and the gap between them is where the real workforce risk sits for mining, manufacturing and semiconductor operations.
The Bank of Canada’s Business Outlook Survey for the third quarter of 2026, published on October 19, lays this out clearly. Read quickly, it’s a story about a cooling hiring market. Read closely, it’s a story about a market that has split in two.
Sentiment recovered, then wobbled
The headline is better than it was. After a weak second quarter, business sentiment improved, and the share of firms planning for a recession in Canada fell from 17% to 6%, the lowest since the Bank started asking in 2023. Sales outlooks moved above their historical average, and investment plans stayed robust, led by natural resources and spending on automation and AI tools.
Then trade talks between Canada and the US broke down on August 21. About three-quarters of the Bank’s interviews happened before that date, and the responses collected afterward show weaker sentiment and a return of tariff drag on investment. The Bank calls it a moderation, not a fundamental shift, and sentiment is still well above the 2025 trade-war low. But anyone using this survey to plan Q1 should remember that most of it was gathered in a slightly better mood than today’s.
Hiring is soft, and automation is part of the reason
On employment, the survey is blunt. Hiring intentions are soft and below the historical average. Most firms plan to hold headcount flat and say current staffing is enough for expected demand. Several expect automation and efficiency gains to absorb sales growth without adding workers. The firms that do plan to expand their workforces mostly point to public spending or natural resources.
TPD’s own client survey points the same way. In our most recent annual survey of clients (about 30 responses, so treat it as directional), 87% expected their hiring to stay flat or increase, with a few more planning increases than cuts. Nobody was forecasting a hiring boom. If you run operations in an industrial sector, you’re probably planning the same way: no big expansion in headcount, but real pressure to keep critical positions covered.
The shortage is narrow, not broad
This is the part of the survey that matters most for industrial employers. More firms said finding labour was harder than a year ago, but reports of binding shortages, meaning shortages that actually limit what a company can produce or deliver, stayed below historical levels. Where shortages did bind, the Bank found they were concentrated in skilled trades and specialized technical positions, and firms often tied them to the difficulty of recruiting in rural areas. A few firms reported broader shortages and blamed changes to immigration policy.
That describes a mine site’s hiring profile almost exactly. A vacant heavy equipment technician, driller or maintenance planner at a remote operation doesn’t just leave a desk empty. It limits what the site can do. A general labour vacancy in a city usually doesn’t. The survey is quietly confirming something recruiters see daily: the market isn’t short of people overall, it’s short of the right people in the wrong places.
Our clients said the same. In our survey, 65% named finding qualified candidates as their top workforce challenge, well ahead of anything else. Budget constraints and rising labour costs came next, but they weren’t close.
Where demand is actually growing
The survey points to three areas of strength, and each one lines up with industries TPD works in.
Natural resources are the first. Elevated commodity prices and expanded production capacity are supporting both export sales and investment plans, and resource firms are among the few reporting workforce expansion. Public spending is the second, particularly on infrastructure and defence, which several firms cited as supporting their outlooks. Some steel firms are expanding domestically on federal procurement and defence spending.
The third is AI-related infrastructure investment in the US, which the Bank named as a driver of export strength.
The survey doesn’t mention semiconductors by name, so we want to be careful here. But AI infrastructure spending is exactly the demand that is pulling semiconductor fabrication and equipment investment in North America, and defence procurement draws on the same pool of specialized technical talent: process technicians, equipment engineers, maintenance specialists and the people who keep cleanroom and precision environments running. These aren’t roles that scale with headcount. They scale with capability, and capability is hard to hire quickly.
What this means for workforce planning
If headcount is flat and the shortage is narrow, a few things follow.
First, plan by critical role, not by total headcount. A flat headcount number can hide a dozen positions where a six-month vacancy would cost you real output. Identify those roles now, before the vacancy exists, and decide what your plan is for each one. Companies that wait until a technician resigns before looking for a replacement are competing for the same small pool of specialists as everyone else, on a worse timeline.
Second, treat contract and project-based capacity as a planning tool, not a last resort. The Bank found that the share of firms that would struggle with an unexpected demand increase has risen to its historical average. Firms that won’t add permanent headcount in an uncertain tariff environment still need a way to flex when a project lands or an outage hits. Contract capacity gives you that without a permanent commitment, and it can double as a lower-risk way to evaluate people you might later want to keep.
Third, protect the people you already have. About one in ten firms in the survey said efforts to attract and retain workers are pushing up expected wage growth, a larger share than in recent quarters. When the market for specialists is tight and hiring is slow, replacing someone is more expensive than keeping them. In our experience the highest-risk window for turnover is the first three months, which means a clear onboarding plan is worth more than most employers give it credit for.
Finally, think about where your competition for talent really comes from. In our client survey, the most common reason clients gave for not sending us more of their hiring was their own internal recruiting team or network. That is reasonable, and it points to the right role for outside help: not replacing your internal team, but taking on the hard-to-fill, specialized and remote roles where a team that already has a full workload is least likely to find someone quickly.
The takeaway
The market isn’t asking employers to hire more people. It’s asking them to be much better at finding the few people who matter most. The firms that treat a flat hiring year as a quiet one will be the ones scrambling when a critical role opens in a rural location in the middle of a busy season.
TPD is a specialist recruitment firm that has worked with mining, manufacturing and semiconductor employers across Canada and the US for over 45 years. If you’re mapping out your critical roles for 2027 and want a second opinion on where the hiring risk sits, book a conversation with our team here.
Source: Bank of Canada, Business Outlook Survey, Third Quarter of 2026, published October 19, 2026.