Research · October 2026
Trades openings are rising. Plant manager openings are easing.
The Barrie Hiring Outlook forecasts job openings for July 2026 to June 2027, by occupation. Statistics Canada reports Barrie together with Kitchener–Waterloo, so the figures cover that whole region.
By Jermaine Wellington, BHRM, Founder of Wells Talent & Co · Published · DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23850457
trades & transport openings, next 12 months vs. the last 12
manufacturing manager openings, one role within the manufacturing group
open positions a quarter across all jobs, flat vs. last year (+0.3%)
Demand by occupation group
Change in forecast openings over the next 12 months against the last 12.
| Occupation group | Change |
|---|---|
| Trades & transport | ▲ 6.9% |
| Natural & applied sciences | ▲ 2.2% |
| Sales & service | ▲ 2.1% |
| Manufacturing & utilities | ▼ 2.3% |
| Business, finance & admin | ▼ 4.1% |
| Education, law, social & government | ▼ 13.5% |
| Health | ▼ 20.5% |
In bold: the groups where most manufacturing and engineering roles sit. Natural resources and arts, culture & sport are left out: too few openings for a stable forecast.
Roles to watch
Selected professional and management roles with enough published data to forecast, grouped for manufacturers.
| Role | Last 4 qtrs, summed | Next 4 qtrs, summed | Change | Likely, Jul–Sep 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Manufacturing & engineering | ||||
| Manufacturing & processing engineers | 202† | 212 | ▲ 5.0% | 34–80 |
| Manufacturing managers | 225 | 202 | ▼ 10.2% | 35–73 |
| Civil & mechanical engineers | 530 | 407 | ▼ 23.2% | 56–149 |
| Technology | ||||
| Computer, software & web designers and developers | 1,085 | 1,267 | ▲ 16.8% | 211–459 |
| Computer & information systems managers | 182† | 208 | ▲ 14.3% | 33–80 |
| Finance & administration | ||||
| Auditors, accountants & investment professionals | 735† | 739 | ≈ 0.5% | 117–272 |
| Managers in financial & business services | 435 | 431 | ≈ −0.9% | 68–161 |
| Administrative services managers | 420 | 367 | ▼ 12.6% | 47–148 |
Hiring one of these roles in the next 12 months?
Send the job title and get a free pay benchmark for it: what employers in the region pay, from published Job Bank wage data. No cost, no obligation.
Benchmark one role →How this was made
Data: quarterly job vacancy counts from Statistics Canada’s Job Vacancy and Wage Survey, Table 14-10-0444-01, 2015 to April–June 2026, for the Kitchener–Waterloo–Barrie economic region. Statistics Canada does not publish Barrie on its own.
Forecast: four quarters ahead, using Google Research’s TimesFM 2.5 time-series model. A forecast, not a guarantee. Openings show demand, not how hard a role is to fill.
Summed: Statistics Canada counts vacancies each quarter. We added four quarters together, so a role open for two quarters counts twice. Compare the % change, not the totals. ▲ rising, ▼ falling, ≈ steady (under 2%).
Likely, Jul–Sep 2026: that quarter has ended, but Statistics Canada hasn’t published it yet. The model expects the figure to land in this range 8 times out of 10.
† Statistics Canada withheld at least one of the past year’s quarterly figures for reliability. We estimated it from neighbouring quarters, so treat that change as indicative.
Download the data
The full forecast behind this Outlook: 152 occupations plus the all-occupations total, four quarters each, with the 80% range and a flag wherever Statistics Canada withheld a figure. Free to reuse. A permanent copy is held on Zenodo, the open research archive run by CERN, under DOI 10.5281/zenodo.23850457, so it can be cited like a published paper.
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). Share and adapt it for any purpose, including commercially, with credit: “Barrie Hiring Outlook forecast data, Wells Talent & Co, October 2026, CC BY 4.0, doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23850457”, linked to this page or to the DOI.
Cite as: Wellington, J. (2026). Barrie Hiring Outlook: Forecast Data, October 2026 [Dataset]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23850457
Adapted from Statistics Canada, Job Vacancy and Wage Survey, Table 14-10-0444-01, reference period 2015 to second quarter 2026. This does not constitute an endorsement by Statistics Canada of this product. Statistics Canada data is used under the Statistics Canada Open Licence.