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🔧 HVAC technician shortages are impacting service availability across Northwest Florida, especially during peak summer months.
💼 Companies like Mills Heating and Air are offering competitive wages and training pathways but still struggle to hire and retain skilled workers.
🌡️ To avoid A/C failure, experts recommend testing your unit early and scheduling regular twice-yearly maintenance.
It ain’t for the faint of heart – especially in the Florida heat – and the numbers nationally show it.
There is a critical shortage around the country and locally in northwest Florida for Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) Techs.
It’s a shortage affecting everyone – even companies with long-standing reputations in the area and good pay. There aren’t enough qualified hands on deck to meet rapidly growing demand – especially in the summer.
Mills Heating and Air, a Freeport-based company that serves from Santa Rosa to Bay County, prides itself on its rapid response to local A/C needs, especially in the hot summer months.
They say they offer competitive wages, entry-level work, promotions for those who want to get their certifications, and more. They have a large list of long time HVAC technicians on their team – but say keeping up with the demand means that sometimes they can’t keep their trademark same day service on the table.
“You have to do things that other companies are not wililng to do to retain employees,” Mills owner Chris White said, “[You’ve got to make a place they want to work at. There’s no secret to that. You’re out there fighting for the same group of employees everybody else is. We have to build a better company that people are attracted to and gravitate to.”
It makes sense – Mills is in the same boat as other companies in terms of its caliber. Its workforce continues to age, and recruits are hard to find. The Air Conditioning, Heating and Refrigeration News, a trade publication, quoted Interplay Learning’s Dan Clapper as saying, “The ratio of Baby Boomers retired, to workers replacing them, is 5:2; with more than 50% of the current workforce over the age of 45 and a significant number of experienced workers already retiring, the industry is losing skilled workers faster than they can be replaced.”
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics notes a little under half a million HVAC jobs around the country right now, but about 10 percent of them are not filled every year. HVAC Techs can get a certification without college debt and end up making a median of $60,000 per year, according to that same set of stats.
The bureau adds that they expect the country to need another 40,000 techs by 2033 to help meet demand.
While nothing is perfect and you will still have some serious uncomfortability in northwest Florida if you A/C Unit quits on you this summer – here are some ways to avoid that happening to you.
Turning on your A/C early: As you might have guessed, most people don’t really have their HVAC units working that hard during the winter months in Northwest Florida. That means people might have an issue for months and not know it until they need their HVAC system to work. That typically happens around May, which means most HVAC companies are driving around creation like chickens with their heads cut off the first day the thermometer approaches 90º. Avoid the rush and the potential for going without A/C by testing your unit’s ability to blow cold air a month earlier.
Regular, twice-yearly maintenance: It’s pretty underrated, but regularly scheduled maintenance can be the difference between paying for several more A/C units over the life of your house – and not paying for several more A/C units over the life of our house.
