The glazier shortage is your hiring pitch, not your excuse

The numbers are blunt. Demand for glaziers is projected to grow around 11 percent through 2026 — faster than the average occupation — while the AGC's 2026 workforce survey has 92 percent of construction firms struggling to fill hourly craft positions. The industry needs roughly 349,000 net new workers this year alone. Retirements are outrunning recruitment, and glazing is invisible to most young people choosing a trade.

What the winning shops do differently

• They recruit where the trades are not. Technical colleges, job-readiness programs, and second-chance pipelines are producing candidates the industry historically ignored.
• They sell the work honestly. Glazing is precision craft with visible results and real pay progression. Show the finished enclosure, the railing on the skyline — the portfolio is the pitch.
• They shorten the apprentice-to-productive gap. Standardized hardware and repeatable details mean a second-year can hang a door correctly. Chaos in the van is a training tax.
• They keep crews installing, not chasing parts. Every hour spent driving to a will-call counter is an hour of scarce labor spent not glazing.

Our part in it

Same-day dispatch from Miami stock, install guides on every product page, and a CRL cross-reference so a new hire can translate the part numbers the old-timers use. Labor is the scarce input now; everything around it should be friction-free.