Canada’s food and beverage manufacturing industry will need to hire 173,000 new workers by 2034 if the country is to expand its food production and strengthen food security, according to a new report from Food Processing Skills Canada (FPSC).

According to the report, Canada’s food and beverage manufacturing industry will need to increase employment simply to maintain its current pace of growth. But the types of workers the industry will need are changing.

“This was the first time that we’ve done a study where the results came back where labourers were not the number-one hiring need, and so that really talks to changes that are being made in the industry, as there’s more automation in manufacturing facilities,” Kevin Elder, project and government relations manager at FPSC, told PeopleNX in an interview.

“The skill set of the people that you need to run your business is changing.”

The report found that approximately 60,800 new hires will be needed in the industry, compared to about 34,300 labourers.

Labour needs missing from food strategy

When the federal government made the food security announcement in June, the organization was surprised, according to Elder.

“We were disappointed to see that labour again wasn’t mentioned as much, really at all, in the strategy. Food and beverage manufacturing is quite a labour-intensive industry.”

The group completed the new study, Labour Market Insights: The Workforce Imperative -- Canada's Food & Beverage Manufacturing Outlook 2026–2034, in order to provide more context to support the new strategy, he said.

“If you’re going to bring manufacturing facilities that are in other countries back to Canada and reshore them, or you’re going to build new manufacturing facilities in Canada to help us expand our industry both domestically and internationally, that’s going to take more workers, and so we wanted that number to be out there so that the government is aware.”

The FPSC is a non-profit organization that provides training, skills development, and labour market information for the food and beverage manufacturing industry.

‘Demographic challenge’ for all sectors

The food industry is not the only one that needs more workers, according to Elder, due to an aging population.

Canada is facing a demographic challenge as more workers retire and fewer young people enter the workforce, Elder said. "Where we’re headed is that if every job in the country paid a million dollars an hour, there would still be vacant jobs.”

Elder said immigration will need to increase to help address the workforce shortage. “We need to have people come to Canada to keep our workforce going,” Elder said.

The report also showed there is a problem among certain sectors within the industry, such as meat processing, in attracting new workers.

"We’ve done some perceptions research, and we know that from the general public, you’re looking at almost three people out of 10 that would consider work in food and beverage manufacturing, but for meat, that’s around one and one-and-a-half out of 10.

"There’s more people out there that would rather bake cookies or make potato chips or brew beer than there are that would rather cut meat,” he said.

It’s important for the industry to educate the public about the industry, in order to attract new workers, he added.

“I think for anyone that hasn’t visited a modern food and beverage manufacturing facility, it’s phenomenal the amount of change that has happened in those facilities. I worked in one 20 years ago, and I just went through a similar facility a year ago. The amount of headaches that I used to have that have been automated away, I was so happy wandering around the facility.”

“The example I usually give is anyone that’s watched the movie Rocky. He’s in a meat plant in the 1970s. That’s not what meat plants look like today, and so it’s making sure that people have updated their notions of what’s going on,” Elder said.

Importance of industry in Canada

The food manufacturing sector was the largest such industry in Canada: in 2025, it directly employed approximately 317,000 people, and had $173 billion in sales, according to the report.

Elder also sees an opportunity for Canadian food manufacturers amid recent trade tensions with the United States, Canada's largest trading partner. “Other countries that have been buying U.S. food and beverage products are looking for a country with more trade certainty, and that’s us,” Elder said.

The government needs to pay attention, he said, in order to fulfill its food goals.

“I would love for (the industry) to be a big piece of the puzzle for how we achieve the goals that are laid out in the food security strategy. Our goal with a report like this is that it will help ignite those conversations and help really hone in on how we’re going to have the industry in 2034 that reflects what everybody wants to see, which is a strong and vibrant food and beverage manufacturing sector in Canada.”