The crew shortage is real

The polite version of the crew shortage story is that the pandemic pushed people out, demand came back fast, and the industry is now playing catch-up. That story has been on a loop since 2022. It is also, at this point in 2026, not honest. The shortage is not a recovery problem but a structural problem the industry has not adjusted to, because adjusting would seem to mean changing how shows are bid, how crews are paid, and how a generation gets trained. None of that is happening at scale yet. The shortage is the floor, not the trough.

A few honest readings of what is actually happening, from the loading dock and the production office.

What the data actually says about the workforce

The numbers most operators are working with do not match the optimistic public framing. AVIXA's own industry analysis has put the global pro AV workforce gap above two million professionals, attributed in part to the fact that only about nine percent of the industry is women and just two percent of technical roles are filled by women, as Rise AV documented in detail. That is a structural undercount that will get worse as the experienced generation continues to retire.

Pollstar reported a parallel pattern years ago that nobody really fixed: road crews quietly doing the work of two or three people while not getting paid for the extra hats. The reporting was 2023. The condition is now standard practice. PRG's earlier coverage of the reopening labor crunch and pricing problems framed it as a transition issue. It was not. It was the new baseline. The 2026 Pollstar Live panel descriptions are still naming crew, transport, and rolling stock as the most cited operational pain points on the touring side, which tells you nothing material has changed.

Why is the industry not adjusting?

Three reasons, all uncomfortable.

First, day rates have not moved enough to make the work attractive against parallel trades. A skilled audio or lighting tech in 2026 can make comparable money on a film set, on a corporate AV install, or in broadcast IT, without the road. Touring used to win on culture and identity. That argument has weakened given current road wear. The shops who pay above scale and treat people like adults are full. The shops who still pay 2019 rates with 2026 expectations are not.

Second, the training pipeline does not exist at the scale the work needs. The serious technical schools graduate hundreds, not thousands, of qualified live events techs a year in the United States. The informal "learn on the side of the stage" path that built the prior two generations still exists, but it has gotten harder to access because shops cannot afford to carry green crew on a paying show the way they once could. The middle of the pipeline is hollow.

Third, the show calendar keeps growing. The market for live events is still trending up past 2030 by AVIXA's forecast. More shows, fewer trained hands, same fixed week. The math has to break somewhere, and it has been breaking on the people in the middle, who quietly leave and do not get replaced one-for-one.

What it actually looks like in 2026

The visible artifacts of the shortage are obvious if you stand at any major venue at load-in:

• Headsets sitting on folding chairs with no one to assign them to. The role is still on the call sheet. The person is not.
• Production coordinators running point on three jobs that used to be three different people.
• Local IATSE calls being filled by hands who have been on the job for three months, not three years, because that was the available pool. The crews are working hard, but the institutional muscle memory is thinner.
• Cross-rental partners filling spec gaps that used to be filled by an in-house tech who knew the gear cold. The gear shows up. The person who used to babysit it does not.
• Strikes pushed later because the load-out crew is smaller than it should be, which pushes the next venue's call later, which pushes the truck schedule later, which is how shows fall behind in 2026.

None of this is theoretical. Any production manager reading this can name the show last month where two of those bullets happened.

Who is actually working on it, and who is pretending

Honest list. A few rental houses are paying significantly above local scale and offering real benefits to their core road crews, which is the only intervention that demonstrably retains experienced hands. A few touring operations have moved to four-week rotations with paid downtime, which has retention numbers worth studying. ESTA and a handful of industry foundations are putting real money into mental health and pipeline programs for crew. Some shops are taking apprenticeship seriously and absorbing the short-term cost. Those operators are not loud about it because it is a competitive advantage.

The pretending category is bigger. It includes anyone still treating the shortage as temporary, anyone still budgeting shows at 2019 crew counts, anyone announcing "we are hiring" without changing what the job pays or what the schedule looks like, and anyone running a trade press think piece that ends with "the industry needs to act" without naming a single change worth making.

What a rational read of 2026 looks like

The crew shortage will not be fixed by recruiting campaigns alone. It will be partially absorbed by automation in fixtures, consoles, and rigging, which is already shrinking the headcount needed on certain show types. It will be partially absorbed by cross-rental and shared inventory networks that reduce duplicated logistics labor. It will be partially absorbed by smaller, more efficient touring footprints. It will be partially absorbed by the people who are still in the business getting paid significantly more, which has already started in pockets and will keep moving up.

It will not be absorbed by pretending the 2019 model is coming back. It is not.

The shops that build their 2026 and 2027 plans around the assumption that the workforce will not return to 2019 levels are the shops that are going to make it through the decade in one piece. The shops still waiting for the labor market to "normalize" are the ones whose calendars will keep slipping until the slipping costs them clients.

GearSource has been quietly watching this play out across our marketplace for years. Inventory turns over faster than the people who know how to run it.

FAQ

Is the live events crew shortage actually getting better in 2026?

Not in any structural sense. The surface has improved in spots because surviving crews are doing more work, not because the workforce has been rebuilt. AVIXA continues to report a multi-million-person workforce gap. The 2026 touring conference circuit still names crew, transport, and rolling stock as top operational pain points, which signals no material recovery.

Why are day rates not rising faster if there is a shortage?

Day rates have moved, but unevenly. Shops paying above local scale and offering real benefits are retaining experienced hands. Shops still bidding at 2019 budgets cannot recruit and lose people quietly. The bidding market keeps a ceiling on rates because clients still expect prior price points, and that ceiling is what keeps the shortage from being fully priced in.

What can a rental house actually do this quarter about crew shortage?

Three things that work. Pay your core crew above the local market and protect their schedules. Build a real apprenticeship line with paid runway. Use cross-rental and shared inventory to reduce the duplicated logistics labor your crew is carrying. None of these are exotic. All of them require accepting that the 2019 cost model is gone.

Is automation going to fix the crew shortage?

It will absorb part of it. Automated fixtures, console networking, rigging systems with smarter motors, and remote control of show systems reduce the headcount needed for certain show types. It will not replace experienced production managers, audio leads, or lighting designers. It buys margin in the middle of the call sheet, not at the top.

Is the shortage the same in corporate AV as in touring?

No. Corporate AV and broadcast have been quieter beneficiaries of the touring exodus. The pay is steadier, the hours are more predictable, and the work is closer to home. Touring still wins on culture and certain career arcs, but it has lost the steady middle of the workforce to adjacent industries that look more sustainable on a five-year view.

Where can shop owners get reliable workforce data instead of trade press headlines?

AVIXA's Industry Outlook and Trends Analysis publishes annually. Pollstar and Live Design report consistently from the touring side. ESTA publishes safety and workforce data on the technical crew base. Cross-referencing two of these sources gives a more honest picture than any single press cycle.

By Marcel Fairbairn, founder of GearSource. 24 years buying, selling, and brokering pro-AV gear globally.