Here’s the bad news: Many jobs are going to be eliminated by artificial intelligence, and, with the speed at which AI is evolving, it’s going to happen sooner rather than later.
Here’s the good news: In 2025 many more young people are choosing careers in the trades — jobs that AI will never be able to replace.
When I was in college in the early ’80s, a bachelor’s degree was the ticket into the corporate world, where “the good jobs were.” At that time, few people were able to get their foot in the corporate door without first earning that diploma.
Now, however, with a glut of liberal arts majors out there, even getting a toe in any corporate door is harder than ever.
Certifications in IT or cybersecurity are the way into a good corporate job now, and you don’t need a university degree to get them. Thus, it’s making less sense to borrow tens of thousands of dollars to fund a degree that may not lead to an entry-level corporate job — not one that isn’t likely to be outsourced to AI in the near future, in any event.
But it is making a lot more sense to master a skilled trade.
Look, as millions of skilled tradespeople from the baby boomer generation retire, there’s a massive shortage of workers with the skills needed to replace them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are currently more than 8 million job openings for the trades — jobs such as electricians and plumbers that can pay well more than $100,000 a year once a tradesperson is established.
That’s leading more college-educated people to give up white-collar, paper-pusher jobs to get into the trades.
As reported in The Washington Post, one 29-year-old in D.C. — with a degree from Notre Dame — considered going to law school, like many others in that lawyer-saturated town. But after watching his friends work long hours as paralegals — and watching his lawyer pals sign their lives over to their big firms — he did something sensible. He became an electrician’s apprentice.
He wasn’t alone. The Post said many more 20-somethings are forgoing the white-collar world to become plumbers, electricians, mechanics and carpenters — all highly satisfying careers that can pay seasoned tradespeople six-figure incomes.
I think it’s great. Don’t we already have too many paper-pushers and useless office types whose only skill is excelling at office politics and kissing the boss’s boots? We need people with real skills — skills that AI can never replace.
AI will be used in the trades to enhance a tradesperson’s skills, say, to conduct better analytics to identify the cause of a specific challenge. But it will never replace the human who is highly skilled using the AI tools. Besides, a skilled tradesperson can earn more than many lawyers do — and likely enjoy the highly satisfying hands-on work more.
My father would be 91 were he with us today. And in his infinite wisdom, he saw the “master-a-trade” trend coming long ago. When I was a 19-year-old college sophomore in 1982, he was so worried that I was an English major destined to a life of paper-pushing misery that he made sure I chose a practical minor that would always be there to help me pay the bills.
To this day, I am the only person ever to graduate from Penn State with a major in English and a minor in air-conditioning/heating.
See Tom Purcell’s syndicated column at TomPurcell.com. Contact at Tom@TomPurcell.com.
