Chile faces mining labor shortage amid investment boom

June 30 (UPI) -- Chile will need to add nearly 37,000 skilled workers over the next decade to support a planned $104.549 billion mining investment pipeline, with labor shortages emerging as one of the industry's biggest risks to bringing new projects online.

As global demand rises for copper and other critical minerals used in the energy transition, the world's largest copper producer faces mounting pressure to train workers for an increasingly technology-driven mining sector.

A report by the Mining Skills Council and the Eleva program found that projected labor demand is equivalent to about one-quarter of the industry's current workforce. In 2025, Chile's mining sector employed more than 300,000 direct workers.

The report estimates that the northern Antofagasta region alone, which accounts for about half of Chile's mining employment, will require more than 18,000 additional skilled workers over the next 10 years.

Most of the projected hiring will replace retiring workers rather than support new projects. The report estimates that 87.4% of future labor demand will result from retirements over the next decade, while only 12.6% will be linked to new mining developments.

At the same time, relatively few young people are entering the industry. Workers between the ages of 18 and 29 account for just 6.9% of the mining workforce nationwide and about 8% in Antofagasta, Chile's leading mining region.

"If training does not evolve at the pace required by the industry, there is a risk that human capital gaps will become a constraint on new projects and prevent Antofagasta from fully capturing the investment opportunities it has today," Verónica Cid, labor market prospecting leader at Fundación Chile, a public-private organization that collaborated on the report, told UPI.

Cid said Chile has made progress compared with other major mining countries such as Australia, Canada and the United States, particularly in increasing women's participation in the industry. However, she said competition for technical, digital and specialized talent has intensified globally.

Manuel Reyes, a mining engineering professor at Andrés Bello University, said rapid technological change is shortening the working life of current skill sets.

"The current workforce will survive, at most, one more major structural change," Reyes told UPI. "For example, the transition of the Chuquicamata mine from an open-pit operation to an underground mine required large-scale workforce reductions and early retirements because traditional skill sets could not be transferred to the new mining method."

Cid agreed, saying the aging workforce coincides with the expansion of automation, remote operations and artificial intelligence, technologies that are reshaping the qualifications the mining industry requires.

She said Chile must accelerate training in critical areas including advanced maintenance, autonomous systems and integrated operations centers. She also called for greater efforts to attract young workers and women, modernize educational programs and strengthen coordination among mining companies, educational institutions and government agencies.

"To avoid a talent gap that could ultimately slow the industry's growth, Chile must accelerate measures to attract young people and women, update educational curricula, expand opportunities for workforce retraining and strengthen regional coordination, especially in mining regions where labor demand is concentrated," Cid said.

Reyes said the industry's immediate challenge is replacing workers expected to retire over the coming years.

He said Chile has the capacity to retrain workers from other sectors, including construction, agriculture and forestry. However, he expects the importance of human labor to gradually decline as automation expands.

According to a study by GlobalData, Chile ranked fourth worldwide and first in Latin America in 2025 for the use of autonomous mining trucks, operating 208 vehicles. China ranked first with 2,090 autonomous trucks, followed by Australia with 1,024 and Canada with 344.

Reyes said the traditional cost analysis that once justified maintaining large human work crews because of the high cost of Western robotics has become outdated following the emergence of Chinese robotics manufacturers, whose products start at about $2,000, reshaping the economics of industrial automation.

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This story was originally published June 30, 2026 at 12:42 PM.