Like many, Brad Jones was in high school when he discovered his future career through a co-op program.
He spent his days doing basic tasks around the workplace — vacuuming, dusting and sweeping the parking lot.
But unlike many high schoolers, Jones was working in a funeral home. He would also assist with funerals, greet people in the lobby during visitations and even help in transferring people’s bodies from where they died.
He liked helping people “at some of their darkest days,” Jones said. He became a funeral director, and today is the owner of Toronto’s Ridley Funeral Home and president of the Ontario Funeral Service Association.
Now, Jones is one of several funeral professionals who are raising concerns about how Ontario’s aging population could strain the “death care” workforce, made up of funeral directors, celebrants, embalmers and more. They say more awareness, recruitment efforts and incentives for new workers are needed to prevent long wait times and rushed services for families mourning loved ones.
“The funeral industry has to be very proactive right now,” Jones said. “We need to start recruiting.”
Why are death care workers concerned?
The number of Ontarians aged 85 and older could more than double by 2050, according to a population projection by Statistics Canada.
There are currently around 397,000 people of that age, making up 2.4 per cent of Ontario’s population. That number could rise to more than one million Ontarians by 2050, Statistics Canada says, in a “medium-growth” scenario where factors such as the province’s fertility and mortality rates meet experts’ expectations, and immigration levels match existing national targets.
As more people grow old and die, the death care sector could struggle to meet the increased need for services, said Heather Kiteley, a board member of the Funeral Service Association of Canada and chief executive officer of Guaranteed Funeral Deposits of Canada, a company that supports funeral homes, cemeteries and crematoriums nationwide.
“We are making plans as a society to make sure that we can care for people as they age,” she said. “We’re not talking about what happens after someone passes away.”
In addition to the prospect of more deaths, the death care workforce is also aging.
There are about 2,500 funeral directors in Ontario, according to the Bereavement Authority of Ontario. In 2023, about four in 10 funeral directors and embalmers in Canada were aged 50 or older, according to the latest data from the Canadian Occupation Projection System.
“As everyone else is retiring, there’s going to be a lot of funeral directors that will be retiring around the same time,” Jones said, adding he doesn’t think enough workers are entering the industry to both replace those who leave and meet growing demand.
Strain would impact families, health-care system
Mourning families could bear the brunt of a strained death care workforce.
“There would be a lot of waiting,” Jones said.
Memorial ceremonies would be more rushed and less meaningful, said Sara Hawkins, a Hamilton-based funeral celebrant. Families would become “just one of many on an assembly line.”
That impact on people’s grieving process would have a ripple effect beyond the home, she added.
“The less that our families are being cared for,” Hawkins said, “then that impacts our workforce.”
Hospitals and health-care workers would also feel the strain, Kiteley said. There could be backups in hospitals, long-term-care homes and morgues if there are not enough workers to transfer bodies to funeral professionals.
Delays and wait times would be even more acute in rural communities, where death care sectors are already under pressure, she said.
But it’s still unclear how many more death care professionals are needed to keep up as more people age and die.
Glen Day, owner of Heritage Funeral Centre in Toronto, noted more people are opting for cremation instead of a traditional or religious burial. Because cremation is quicker and often requires only transfer workers, funeral professionals may not be as overworked as some expect, Day said.
“The type of job in the industry is changing,” he said.
Awareness, incentives needed to boost workforce
Funeral professionals say more open conversations are needed to raise awareness about the death care workforce and the future it could face.
“We do live in a grief-phobic society,” Hawkins said. If conversations about death care are avoided because they are uncomfortable, she added, the sector won’t get the support it needs to keep up as people age and die.
Incentives to attract new workers could also be part of the equation.
Kiteley said the province could draw inspiration from existing programs, such as grants for businesses to support recruiting or covering tuition for nurses committed to working in rural communities, to find ways to attract new death care workers.
The death care workforce also needs to focus on recruiting proactively to ensure it has enough workers, Jones said. And to make sure they stay in the field, he said there needs to be more focus on work-life balance and preventing emotional or physical burnout.
People looking at the death care sector should know that it’s not gruesome or thankless work — it’s rewarding, Jones said.
“It’s caring for the dead,” he said. “But it’s also a lot of caring for the living.”
