A softer labour market can create false confidence about a skills shortage. More applicants may be available, but that does not mean a print or packaging company can quickly find someone who knows its process, equipment, substrates, quality standards, and day-to-day troubleshooting reality.
Recently, Statistics Canada reported total Canadian employment declined by 42,000 in August 2026, while manufacturing employment increased by 22,000, including 14,000 in Ontario. At the same time, Government of Canada Job Bank listings showed 45 printing press operator openings nationally, including 13 in Ontario and 11 in the Toronto region. Those figures do not describe every local market or every employer’s situation. They do make one management point clear: labour availability and skill availability are not the same measure.
Why the real risk starts before the vacancy
Many companies still treat specialized labour as mainly a recruiting issue. They post a role, adjust compensation, call recruiters, and hope the market responds. That may be necessary, but it does not solve the underlying exposure when one employee is the only person who can run, adjust, or troubleshoot a critical press, finishing line, workflow, or maintenance process.
In specialized production roles, availability is often skill-specific, equipment-specific, location-sensitive, time-sensitive, and knowledge-dependent. A vacancy is often just the moment the business finally sees a capability risk that has existed for years.
The better question is not simply, “Can we hire someone?” It is, “How will we maintain this capability if the person who holds it is unavailable?”
Treat critical skills like critical capacity
Print and packaging leaders already track equipment bottlenecks, supplier dependencies, and maintenance risk. Specialized employee knowledge deserves the same discipline. If a role takes months to replace and the production or customer impact would be significant, that is not an HR detail. It is a business continuity issue.
A practical review should identify roles that would be hard to replace, processes that depend on one person, likely retirements or turnover, time to full productivity, and employees who could be developed as backups or successors. A simple critical-skills risk map can help: critical role, essential skills, current skill holders, replacement time, business impact, and development action.
This shifts the conversation from headcount to resilience.
Recruiting matters, but it cannot do all the work
External recruiting remains important, especially when a company genuinely lacks a capability. But relying on the outside market alone is risky when the skill is tied to a specific press, process, application, or customer requirement.
Cross-training, mentoring, structured onboarding, progressive responsibility, and visible career paths give a company more than one way to sustain essential work. Retention matters for the same reason. When an experienced employee leaves, the business can lose more than labour hours. It can lose undocumented setup knowledge, quality judgment, customer-specific expectations, and the informal workarounds that keep production moving.
That is why workforce planning should be treated as a business-resilience discipline. Identify critical capabilities, assess where they are concentrated, develop internal depth, retain experienced people long enough to transfer knowledge, and recruit externally where internal development cannot meet the timeline.
A vacancy becomes an emergency when workforce capability was treated as an individual employee’s responsibility rather than an organizational asset. If your team needs help assessing workforce risk, succession depth, role clarity, or recruiting priorities, CFR can help. Contact us at https://connectingforresults.com/contact/.
Frequently Asked Questions
This FAQ section answers common questions about the skills shortage and how print and packaging companies can manage capability risk, maintain critical production knowledge, and build workforce resilience.
Why can a softer labour market still leave companies exposed to a skills shortage?
More applicants can create the impression that hiring will be easy, but specialized production work often requires knowledge of specific presses, substrates, workflows, and quality standards. A skills shortage can persist even when unemployment rises, because labour availability and skill availability are different measures.
What is the main risk when one person holds a critical production capability?
The risk starts before a vacancy appears. If only one employee can run, adjust, or troubleshoot a key press or process, the business has a single point of failure. When that person is unavailable, production continuity, quality, and customer commitments can be affected immediately.
How should leaders assess critical-skills risk in print and packaging operations?
Treat critical skills like critical capacity. Identify roles that are hard to replace, tasks dependent on one person, likely retirements or turnover, and time to full productivity. A simple risk map can track the role, essential skills, skill holders, replacement time, business impact, and development actions.
Why is recruiting alone not a complete response to a skills shortage?
External recruiting helps when a capability is missing, but many skills are equipment-specific, location-sensitive, and tied to customer requirements. A skills shortage becomes harder to manage if the organization relies only on the outside market instead of building internal depth through development and knowledge transfer.
What practical steps build workforce resilience beyond hiring?
Build more than one path to sustain essential work. Cross-training, mentoring, structured onboarding, and progressive responsibility reduce dependence on a single expert. Retention supports knowledge transfer, since departing employees can take undocumented setup details, quality judgment, and customer-specific expectations with them.
