Canada Needs 28,000 Electricity Workers by 2028
Canada needs nearly 28,000 electricity workers by 2028 as retirements hit. Roles, AI skills gaps, and career advice for US and Canadian talent.
Canada's electricity sector just put a hard number on a soft problem everyone in the industry already feels: talent. A discussion paper from Electricity Canada and Positive Energy at the University of Ottawa — Building Canada's Electricity Workforce: Aligning Policy, Investment, and Talent for Growth — says the sector needs nearly 28,000 new employees by 2028. Demand for electricity could rise about 50% by 2050. And of the near-term hiring need, roughly 57% simply replaces retirees — about 15,700 retirements between 2023 and 2028.
That is not a side issue. It is the build plan.
As Josée Guibord, President and CEO of Electricity Canada, put it:
"People are the foundation of Canada's electricity future. We can secure financing, obtain approvals even procure equipment, but without the skilled workforce to deliver projects, everything will eventually stall. If Canada wants to build the electricity system needed to power economic growth and electrification, workforce planning must be treated with the same urgency as every other form of critical infrastructure."
The paper frames labour as enabling infrastructure — the same category as steel, transformers, and interconnection queues. Treat people like a lagging afterthought and the rest of the capital stack waits. Treat workforce planning like critical infrastructure and projects actually energize. Full coverage and context are on Electricity Canada's announcement.
Why this matters south of the border too
If you work in the US, do not skim past this as "a Canada story." The same pressures are reshaping hiring from Texas to Virginia to the Pacific Northwest: speed-to-power for data centers, transmission and substation build-outs, and a craft pipeline that is already stretched. Cross-border talent flows — lineworkers, protection and control techs, industrial electricians, commissioning specialists — already move with the work. When Canada needs tens of thousands of new electricity workers in a few years, US contractors, utilities, and EPCs feel the competition for the same scarce profiles.
Monica Gattinger, Founding Chair of Positive Energy, captured the collaboration problem clearly:
"The workforce needed to build and operate the electricity system of the future cannot be developed by any one sector acting alone. Success will depend on governments, industry, labour, Indigenous partners and educational institutions working together..."
That sentence could hang on a wall in any North American utility HR office. The grid does not care which side of the border your apprenticeship card was stamped on — it cares whether the crew shows up qualified.
Where the jobs actually sit
"28,000 workers" is a sector total, not one job title. For electrical professionals reading ElectricalRoles.com, the demand clusters around familiar, high-value roles:
- Lineworkers — transmission and distribution build and rebuild as load grows
- Substation technicians — new and upgraded yards, equipment installs, maintenance
- Relay / protection & control (P&C) — the brain of every modern station and interconnect
- Industrial and construction electricians — generation, industrial electrification, and the data center / load-side work that pulls power off the grid
- Commissioning and testing specialists — turning installed plant into accepted, energized assets
If you already sit in one of those lanes, the message is optimistic and practical: the pipeline is short, retirements are real, and employers who wait for perfect résumés will lose projects. Browse open electrical roles across the US and Canada and you will see that pattern week after week.
The AI skills gap inside the utility workforce
One of the paper's quieter but important findings: about 60% of electricity-sector employees already use AI tools, yet only 24% have formal AI training. That gap is opportunity, not threat. Utilities and contractors that teach people how to use AI for planning, outage analytics, documentation, and field support will retain talent and raise productivity. Workers who pick up practical AI skills — without pretending the tools replace craft judgment — will stand out in hiring and promotion.
The exponential age is arriving in the control room and the trailer, not only in the data hall. Get literate early.
Practical advice for job seekers
Lean into apprenticeships and tickets that travel. Red seal and equivalent pathways, plus documented hours on transmission, substation, or industrial work, make you portable across provinces and attractive to US employers facing the same crunch.
Name the systems you know. On a résumé or profile, "relay tech" is weaker than "SEL / GE Multilin experience on 230 kV yards" or "commissioned MV switchgear on hyperscale campus." Specificity wins interviews.
Add AI literacy without hype. Complete a short, practical course your employer trusts. Show how you used a tool to speed a switching procedure review, a materials takeoff, or a lessons-learned log. That 24% training figure means the bar is still low — clear it.
Stay open to mobility. Some of the best seats will not be in the city where you started. Per diems, relocation packages, and multi-year programs are part of how the sector will close a 28,000-person gap.
Practical advice for employers
Treat workforce like capital. Guibord's point is the strategy: plan people with the same urgency as financing and equipment. That means multi-year apprenticeship intake, not panic hiring when the yard pours.
Partner beyond your fence line. Gattinger's call for governments, industry, labour, Indigenous partners, and educators is the operating model. Dual-credit programs, Indigenous workforce pathways, and community college labs beat poaching the same ten senior techs forever.
Close the AI training gap. If 60% of your people already touch AI tools, formalize training. You will reduce risk, raise quality, and give mid-career staff a reason to stay.
Publish real ranges and real paths. Transparent pay, clear progression from apprentice to journeyman to lead, and visible commissioning or P&C tracks beat vague "competitive compensation" language every time.
The bottom line
Canada needs nearly 28,000 new electricity-sector employees by 2028, with more than half of that hiring replacing retirees, while long-term demand could climb about 50% by 2050. Labour is enabling infrastructure. The US is running a parallel race for speed-to-power and grid capacity. For electricians, lineworkers, substation and relay techs, and the leaders who run them, this is a strong moment to build a career — and for employers, a clear signal to invest in people before the schedule slips.
See what is hiring now on ElectricalRoles.com jobs, and match your skills to the grid that has to get built.
