What happened
Canada's talent shortage is easing slightly, as reported by Talent Canada. ManpowerGroup's 2026 Canada Talent Shortage Survey found that 71 per cent of organizations have difficulty filling roles. A year earlier the figure was 77 per cent.
The survey covered more than 1,000 Canadian employers and ran from Oct. 1 to 31, 2025. The hard skills employers find most difficult to source are operations and logistics, sales and marketing, and AI literacy. The soft skills in highest demand are communication, collaboration and teamwork, professionalism and work ethic, and adaptability and willingness to learn.
The gaps are uneven. Utilities and natural resources report the largest scarcity at 77 per cent, followed by hospitality at 75 per cent. Among employers with 1,000 to 4,999 staff, 77 per cent report shortages. To cope, employers are investing in upskilling and reskilling, recruiting from new talent pools and raising wages.
Why it matters if you are hiring
A dip from 77 to 71 per cent is not relief. Nearly three in four employers still cannot fill roles when they need to. Do not slow your hiring plans because the headline number improved.
The more useful signal is which skills are hard to find. Operations and logistics and sales and marketing sit on the list next to AI literacy. These are core roles, not niche ones: coordinators, planners, supervisors, account executives. If you hire for them, expect the competition for good candidates to stay tight.
AI literacy is now showing up as a requirement across jobs, not only in technical ones. That changes how you write job descriptions and how you screen. A logistics planner who can work comfortably with AI-assisted tools may now be worth more than one who cannot, and the report does not say how fast that premium is moving.
The soft skills list matters too. Adaptability and willingness to learn are what make upskilling work. If you plan to build skills from within, hire for that trait, because it is what lets a new or current employee pick up new tools.
One thing to do this week
Pick your three hardest open roles and add one line to each about the AI or digital skills the job really needs day to day. Then add one interview question that tests how the candidate learns a new tool. That gives you a screen for both the skill and the willingness to learn.
Traverse has placed operations, sales, finance and technical people with Canadian and US employers since 1997, and we help hiring teams find candidates who can do the job today and grow into the next version of it.