Trinity Talent Group Founder Jason Duffy Publishes Finding from 1,000 skilled Trades placements

Three years of placement data challenges how collision and automotive employers approach the skilled technician shortage

MANCHESTER , NH, UNITED STATES, October 6, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Trinity Talent Group has released its 2026 Technician Retention Report, an analysis of 1,000 technician interviews conducted over the past year. Its central finding runs against how most collision and automotive employers approach turnover: transparency, not compensation, is the number one reason technicians leave.

The report was authored by Jason Duffy, founder and chair of Trinity Talent Group, who conducted the interviews across 48 states. What technicians raised, repeatedly, was not a demand for more money. It was a list of questions nobody at their shop would answer: how flag hours are actually calculated, what the logic behind their pay rate is, what it takes to advance, whether work is distributed fairly, and where the shop’s profits go when raises do not materialize.

“Pay is a painkiller, not a cure,” Duffy said. “Every shop owner’s first instinct when a tech gets restless is to throw money at him. That buys you a few months and it fixes nothing, because the problem was never the number on the check. It was that nobody ever explained the number on the check. Silence doesn’t read as neutral to a technician. It reads as something being hidden.”

The report also quantifies what that turnover costs, and the figure is substantially higher than most operators assume. Trinity’s analysis puts the revenue lost to a single empty bay at $24,775 per week, or $107,276 per month, reaching $1,288,300 over a year for a solid producer. Standard flag-hour calculations, the report found, understate the true cost of a vacancy by roughly 75 percent, because they omit parts markup, calibrations, and sublet work. Trinity’s average repair order value across the dataset was $4,955.

Against that number, the report’s recommendations require no increase in labor spend. They include posting flagged hours daily where the floor can see them, explaining the labor-time methodology rather than asserting it, publishing a complete pay scale with the advancement criteria attached, making dispatch decisions defensible, holding monthly one-on-one production conversations, and telling the team where profit is being reinvested. The report concludes that a shop implementing these practices over 30 days can hold its technicians without changing a single pay rate.

Duffy argues the findings have a second use that most employers miss entirely. Once a shop knows what technicians actually want, it can market for it.

“Knowing what talent wants means you can market for it, and almost nobody does,” Duffy said. “Every shop in America runs the same job post. Competitive pay, great team, apply today. That tells a technician nothing, which is exactly why it doesn’t work.”

The report outlines where that marketing happens. Job boards remain the baseline, but the report’s position is that the job description itself is the variable almost no employer treats as one: a post that names the pay scale, explains how flag hours are calculated, and states the advancement path is answering the questions technicians brought to all 1,000 interviews, before they ever have to ask.

Social media, the report finds, is the most effective channel available, and the one most underused in the trades. A shop that shows its bays, its people, and how it actually operates is doing in public what the report recommends doing internally. Community events put the same message in front of technicians who are not actively looking but would move for the right environment. And trade schools, Duffy argues, are the most overlooked opportunity of all.

“Trade schools produce entry-level technicians, not profit-creating technicians,” Duffy said. “Those have to be headhunted. But the schools are still where you go to tell students what you’re about and how it differs from where most places are failing them. Walk in and explain that your pay scale is published and your dispatch is transparent, and you’ve separated yourself from every other shop that will recruit that class.”

Duffy built Trinity Talent Group over three years, placing more than 1,000 skilled technicians across 48 states and representing roughly 3 million billable hours of technician labor, before selling the company in 2026. He retains a seat as chair. A U.S. Army veteran with more than eleven years of service, including service as an Army recruiter, he previously served as a vice president at a medical staffing firm. He has been recognized in Marquis Who’s Who in America for his influence in the trades and his charity work, and has delivered keynote addresses to industry audiences.

The full 2026 Technician Retention Report is available at trinitytalentgroup.com.

Duffy is available to media for commentary on skilled trades labor shortages, technician recruiting and retention, and the use of social media in trades hiring.

About Trinity Talent Group

Trinity Talent Group is a talent acquisition firm serving the skilled trades and manufacturing sectors, with placements completed in 48 states. The firm works with employers on recruiting strategy, talent marketing, and retention practices.

jason duffy
Trinity talent group
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Written By: EIN Presswire