The HVAC industry's well-documented technician shortage is now being compounded by a second, less-discussed workforce problem: a growing shortage of qualified instructors to teach at trade schools and career and technical education programs, manufacturers and training executives warned in June.
The industry already faces a projected need to fill roughly 40,000 HVAC job openings annually over the next decade, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics projections. Those openings are driven in part by the retirement of nearly 40% of the current skilled trades workforce within the same period. What is now becoming clear to training managers at major manufacturers is that the same demographic wave that will thin the technician ranks is also emptying the pool of experienced instructors who can prepare the next generation to fill those roles.
The Instructor Gap
Doug Smiley, manager of technical training at Lennox Residential HVAC, described the situation as a mirror image of the technician shortage. Just as contractors are struggling to find experienced technicians, training programs are struggling to find instructors who have both theoretical knowledge and genuine field experience. The two shortages are related and will worsen together as the same cohort of experienced industry veterans ages out of both roles simultaneously. Smiley said the question of where the next generation of instructors comes from is one that the industry has not yet adequately addressed in its workforce development conversations.
Howard Weiss, president of ESCO Institute and HVAC Excellence, said the scope of the problem is larger than most industry leaders currently recognize because the HVACR field now sits at the center of multiple simultaneous economic and technological transformations — data center construction, semiconductor manufacturing, building electrification, heat pump adoption, and cold chain logistics — each of which is independently driving demand for highly trained technicians. The instructor shortage constrains the entire pipeline that produces those workers, meaning the downstream consequences are compounded across every sector drawing on the same training infrastructure.
The Real-World Knowledge Gap
Steve Howard, an HVAC industry veteran and founder of training firm ACT Group Inc., identified a specific qualitative problem with the instructor pool that goes beyond quantity. Many instructors at CTE programs can teach textbook theory effectively but lack the practical field experience to show students how that theory applies to the diagnostic situations and installation challenges they will actually encounter on jobsites. Howard said the inability to bridge from theory to application is a fundamental deficiency in instruction that turns out technicians who can recite fundamentals but struggle to translate them into action under field conditions.
The U.S. Department of Education reported for the 2025–26 year that at least 26 states experienced shortages in CTE teachers — a systemic problem that extends beyond HVAC into other technical trades but falls particularly hard on the HVAC sector because of the field's rapid technology changes. The transition to A2L refrigerants, the expansion of variable-speed and inverter-driven equipment, and the growing integration of building automation and controls into HVAC systems mean that instructors trained on older equipment become outdated quickly, and replacements who know the current technology are extremely difficult to recruit.
Proposed Solutions
Multiple training executives and manufacturers said the most practical near-term solution is recruiting recently retired HVAC contractors and journeymen into part-time or adjunct teaching roles, as those individuals possess the field experience that is hardest to replace and may be willing to share institutional knowledge after transitioning away from active business operations. Howard said retired contractors could teach once or twice a week in a structured classroom setting, connecting real-world experience to curriculum without requiring full-time employment. Weiss said schools actively recruiting from the retirement-eligible cohort would gain access to exactly the technical mastery they need most.
Compensation structure is a barrier, since academic pay scales tied to degree credentials rather than field experience systematically undervalue the practical expertise that trade instructors need most. Weiss also noted that women, who constitute 51% of the U.S. population and approximately 2% of the HVACR technician workforce, represent an underutilized potential source for both technicians and instructors — a demographic reality that limits the effective recruiting pool by roughly half from the outset. David Rames, senior specialist of product promotion and development at Midea Residential Air Conditioning, said industry professionals need to actively partner with trade school administrators to update curricula to reflect current equipment technology, ensuring that what is being taught aligns with what students will encounter in the field.
