Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January that the next wave of six-figure jobs will come from trades like plumbing, electrician work, and construction, driven by a global data center build-out totaling $7 trillion in capital outlays by the end of the decade. He described this as the “largest infrastructure build-out in human history,” creating “a lot of jobs” for plumbers, electricians, construction workers, and steelworkers, adding that “everybody should be able to make a great living” without needing a PhD in computer science. A McKinsey report estimated that between 2023 and 2030, the U.S. will need an additional 130,000 trained electricians, 240,000 construction laborers, and 150,000 construction supervisors. Huang previously told Channel 4 News in the U.K. in 2025 that the skilled craft segment of every economy will see a boom, requiring doubling every single year. In contrast, Ford CEO Jim Farley warned at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2025 that AI is replacing white-collar entry points, noting hiring entry workers at tech companies has fallen 50% since 2019 and that AI will replace half of all white-collar workers in the U.S. Farley also told Axios in September 2025 that the country lacks the blue-collar workforce to backfill manufacturing ambitions, and in June 2025 said the U.S.