The job market has been a tough sell for many Gen Z graduates, with tariffs, economic uncertainty, and artificial intelligence reshaping hiring plans across corporate America.
But according to Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang, the next wave of six-figure opportunities won’t be found in a Wall Street cubicle or Silicon Valley Slack channel. Instead, high-paying careers will partially come by picking up a wrench—literally.
As tech giants race to build sprawling data centers—totaling $7 trillion in global capital outlays by the end of the decade—Huang believes the world is on the cusp of what he calls the “largest infrastructure build-out in human history,” which will create “a lot of jobs.”
“It’s wonderful that the jobs are related to tradecraft, and we’re going to have plumbers and electricians and construction and steelworkers,” he said in conversation with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January.
The hands-on skills needed to construct what he described as chip, computer, and AI factories are already facing shortages—even though many roles pay over $100,000 without requiring a college degree. One McKinsey report estimated that between 2023 and 2030, there will be a need for an additional 130,000 trained electricians—as well as 240,000 construction laborers and 150,000 construction supervisors—in the U.S. alone.
“Everybody should be able to make a great living,” Huang said. “You don’t need to have a PhD in computer science to do so.”
As Huang sees a trades boom, other CEOs warn there’s not enough skilled workers
This isn’t the first time Huang has expressed his optimistic outlook on new career paths emerging alongside AI.
“The skilled craft segment of every economy is going to see a boom,” he told Channel 4 News in the U.K. in 2025. “You’re going to have to be doubling and doubling and doubling every single year.”
That optimism stands in contrast to warnings from leaders like Ford CEO Jim Farley, who has repeatedly cautioned AI is hollowing out traditional white-collar entry points—just as the education system continues to funnel students toward four-year degrees.
“There’s more than one way to the American Dream, but our whole education system is focused on four-year [college] education,” Farley said at the Aspen Ideas Festival in 2025. “Hiring an entry worker at a tech company has fallen 50% since 2019. Is that really where we want all of our kids to go? Artificial intelligence is gonna replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.”
At the same time, Farley has warned the country lacks the blue-collar workforce needed to support a manufacturing and infrastructure revival.
“I think the intent is there, but there’s nothing to backfill the ambition,” Farley told Axios in September 2025. “How can we reshore all this stuff if we don’t have people to work there?”
In June of the same year, Farley said the U.S. was already short 600,000 factory workers and 500,000 construction workers.
BlackRock’s Larry Fink has echoed these concerns, singling out the electrical industry as a looming bottleneck. Electrician jobs are expected to grow 9% over the next decade, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
“I’ve even told members of the Trump team that we’re going to run out of electricians that we need to build out AI data centers,” Fink said to an audience at CERAWeek, an S&P Global energy conference hosted in Houston. “We just don’t have enough.”
A version of this story originally published on Fortune.com on January 21, 2026.
More on the future of work
- Data center CEO is hoping for a skilled-trades revival in his lifetime—he’s recruiting couch-dwelling Gen Z with two weeks of vacation on day one.
- Jamie Dimon says six-figure shipyard jobs are the new ‘American Dream’—but candidates will need to endure hours of extreme heat, cold, and rain.
- Costco CEO Ron Vachris says tech is ‘elevating’ workers,’ not replacing them—as IBM and Delta bosses make the same bet on humans.
