Updated July 2026 · 8-minute read · Peak HealthCare Private College
If you’ve been anywhere near a hospital, a long-term care home, or a home care agency in Ontario lately, you’ve probably noticed the same thing families and workers across the province are saying out loud: there aren’t enough people to do the work. This isn’t a temporary blip left over from the pandemic. It’s a structural shortage that’s projected to get worse before it gets better, and for anyone considering a healthcare career, that gap represents something else entirely: opportunity, and a lot of it.
Here’s what the data actually shows, why the shortage exists, and what it means if you’re weighing a move into a role like Personal Support Worker (PSW).
How Bad Is the Shortage, Really?
The numbers are bigger than most people expect.
Ontario’s long-term care sector alone will need at least 25,400 additional nurses and personal support workers by 2029, according to the Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA)*, more than double the size of the current nursing and PSW workforce in that sector. Over 100,000 people currently work in long term care in Ontario, spanning nurses, PSWs, food services staff, and support workers, and that number needs to grow substantially just to keep pace with an aging population and new long-term care beds coming online.
It’s not only long-term care. The home and community care sector has been hit even harder in some respects: the Ontario Community Support Association** has reported a 421% increase in vacant registered nurse positions and a 331% increase in vacant PSW positions in that part of the system. Across Canada, the job vacancy rate in health care and social assistance climbed from 3.2% in mid-2019 to 3.6% by early 2026, and the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI)*** notes that vacancy rates for nurses and PSWs in Canada now sit above the average seen in comparable OECD countries.
On the ground, provincial staffing studies have described long-term care homes running short 5 to 10 PSWs during a typical 24-hour period, with some homes reporting shortfalls of 20 to 50 workers a day. That’s not an abstract statistic. It’s real shifts, in real buildings, that no one shows up for.
Why the Gap Keeps Growing
A few forces are compounding at once:
An aging population. Ontario’s 65-plus population is growing quickly, and with it, demand for long-term care, home care, and supportive services. New long-term care beds are being built across the province, and every one of them needs staff before it can open.
Workforce turnover. It’s not just about hiring, it’s about keeping people. An estimated 25% of PSWs with two or more years of experience leave the profession every year, according to Ontario government staffing research, often trading long-term care for retail, hospital roles with better pay, or other sectors entirely. CIHI**** has described this as a self-reinforcing cycle: shortages lead to more overtime, overtime fuels burnout, and burnout drives further turnover, which deepens the shortage.
Wage and workload pressure. In many communities, PSW wages haven’t kept pace with the physical and emotional demands of the job, especially relative to comparable roles with lighter workloads. That’s been pushing experienced workers toward hospitals, which typically offer better pay and conditions than long-term care, further thinning out the long-term care workforce specifically.
A shrinking pipeline relative to demand. Even with new PSWs graduating every year, the rate of entry hasn’t been enough to offset both rising demand and existing turnover. The gap isn’t closing, by most current projections, it’s widening.
What This Means If You’re Considering a Healthcare Career
A workforce shortage of this size changes the calculation for job seekers in a few concrete ways.
Faster job placement. When a sector is short-staffed at this scale, employers aren’t in a position to be selective the way they might be in a saturated field. Newly certified PSWs are typically placed quickly, often before they’ve even finished job hunting in earnest, because home care agencies, long-term care homes, hospitals, and private care providers are all recruiting at the same time.
More choice in where you work. With shortages spanning long-term care, home and community care, and hospitals, graduates aren’t boxed into a single setting. You can weigh shift work in a care home against home visits with a community agency against hospital-adjacent roles, based on what actually fits your life.
Room to move up. Some PSWs use the role as a launching point into nursing, health administration, or specialized care work once they’ve got real experience and a clearer sense of which corner of the healthcare system they want to build a career in.
Urgency, but not desperation. It’s worth being clear-eyed here: a staffing shortage this severe also reflects genuinely difficult working conditions in parts of the sector, particularly long-term care. Going in informed, understanding pay ranges, workload realities, and which employers invest in their staff, puts you in a much stronger position than going in blind.
Why Training Now Makes Sense
PSW training programs in Ontario typically run 6 to 12 months, combining classroom instruction with supervised clinical placement, which means you can move from “starting a program” to “working in the field” faster than almost any other career path with comparable pay and demand. Given that provinces are actively investing in strategies to stabilize the long-term care and home care workforce, and that the staffing gap is expected to persist through the end of the decade, the timing lines up: the sector needs people now, and it’s going to keep needing them for years.
If you’re weighing whether this is the right moment to get into healthcare, the honest answer is that the market is telling you yes; loudly, and with real numbers behind it.
Ready to Start?
Peak HealthCare Private College offers a remote NACC-accredited Personal Support Worker program based in North York, with flexible class schedules and dedicated placement support to help you get into the workforce as quickly as possible. Explore our programs or get in touch to talk through which path fits your situation.
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Sources: Ontario Long Term Care Association (OLTCA), Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), Ontario Community Support Association (OCSA), Government of Ontario Long-Term Care Staffing Study, Statistics Canada.
*https://www.oltca.com/about-long-term-care/the-data/
**https://www.ocsa.on.ca/staffing-crisis-threatens-home-and-community-care-sector-with-421-increase-in-vacant-rn-positions-and-331-increase-in-vacant-psw-positions
***https://www.cihi.ca/en/aging-with-dignity-using-data-to-strengthen-long-term-care-for-canadians/understanding-staffing-challenges-in-long-term-care (Feb 2022, comparing 2020-to-2021 data)
****https://www.ontario.ca/page/long-term-care-staffing-study