When Jensen Huang showed up at Carnegie Mellon, the Nvidia CEO used his commencement address to the class of 2026 to make a case for a very different kind of career: one that requires a hard hat, not a laptop.<\/p>\n
“AI gives America the opportunity to build again,” Huang told the assembled crowd in Pittsburgh. “Electricians, plumbers, iron workers, technicians, builders \u2014 this is your time. AI is not just creating a new computing industry; it is creating a new industrial era (1).”<\/p>\n
Must Read <\/p>\n
It’s a striking message to deliver at one of the country’s top computer science and engineering universities (2). But the data suggests Huang is onto something, and for anyone weighing their career options, the numbers are hard to ignore.<\/p>\n
The AI buildout runs on human hands <\/p>\n
The scale of infrastructure being built to power artificial intelligence is staggering. Fortune reports that capital spending from the largest U.S. tech companies could hit $700 billion this year alone, driven by data center construction and the infrastructure needed to train and deploy AI models (3).<\/p>\n
Worldwide, McKinsey projected the data center boom could generate close to $7 trillion in investment by 2030 (4).<\/p>\n
None of that gets built without people swinging hammers, pulling wire and laying pipe.<\/p>\n
Randstad’s March analysis of more than 150 million U.S. job postings found that demand for skilled trades is now growing three times faster than for professional desk-based roles (5).<\/p>\n
Since generative AI hit the mainstream in late 2022 (6), postings for construction workers, welders and electricians are up between 18% and 30%. More specialized roles have seen even sharper spikes: demand for robotics technicians jumped 107%, and HVAC engineers surged 67%.<\/p>\n
“AI can’t build data centers, upgrade power grids, or maintain its own infrastructure,” Greg Dyer, Randstad North America’s chief commercial officer, said in the report (7).<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the pipeline of workers entering the trades isn’t keeping up. Companies can’t hire fast enough to replace the waves of older tradespeople now entering retirement \u2014 Randstad found for every 100 young workers entering manufacturing, 102 are leaving (8).<\/p>\n
Huang put it simply in his speech: “This is the largest technology infrastructure buildout in human history and a once-in-a-generation opportunity to reindustrialize America (9).”<\/p>\n
Read More: From $10 to $100K: Build your real estate empire using the same strategies as the 1%<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n What these jobs actually pay <\/p>\n Here’s what makes Huang’s message relevant beyond the rhetoric: the pay in the skilled trades has become competitive with many college-degree roles, but without the debt.<\/p>\n According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the median annual wage for electricians was $62,350 as of May 2024, with employment projected to grow 9% through 2034 \u2014 much faster than the average across all occupations (10).<\/p>\n The BLS also reports median pay for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters was $62,970 (11). The top 10% of electricians earn more than $106,030 (12) annually; for plumbers, that figure exceeds $105,150 (13).<\/p>\n Those earnings come through apprenticeship programs, not four-year degrees. Electricians, for instance, typically complete a four- to five-year apprenticeship (14) that includes paid on-the-job training from day one. As Fortune noted (15),(16), these paths let workers earn while they learn \u2014 offering a faster, often cheaper, route into the workforce than a traditional college education.<\/p>\n Huang has previously suggested that trades workers could soon command six-figure salaries even early in their careers, according to Fortune (17). And CNBC reporting backs that up: advertised wages for HVAC engineers have risen 10\u201315% over the past four years, and specialists moving into high-level data center roles can see pay bumps of 25\u201330% (18).<\/p>\n The caveats worth knowing <\/p>\n The opportunity is real, but it isn’t guaranteed, as surge in skilled trade demand is heavily concentrated in data center construction, and not all signals in the broader industry are positive.<\/p>\n Fortune notes that data center construction actually slowed last year for the first time since 2020, as developers hit delays in zoning, permitting and securing adequate power supply (19).<\/p>\n Private nonresidential construction contracted in six of the seven months through mid-2025, per ABC data (20), and tariff-related disruptions and immigration enforcement actions have compounded the pressure: 28% of contractors reported related workforce impacts, ENR reports (21).<\/p>\n “With the exception of the ongoing boom in data center construction\u2026there are few sources of momentum,” Anirban Basu, Chief Economist at the Associated Builders and Contractors, noted (22).<\/p>\n And trades workers building data centers don’t necessarily get permanent employment once their portion of the work wraps up.<\/p>\n The bigger picture for your career <\/p>\n For a generation entering a labor market rattled by uncertainty, the signals are mixed but real.<\/p>\n A November 2025 Stanford study found a 16% decline in early-career employment across highly AI-exposed occupations since ChatGPT’s launch, with employment among developers aged 22\u201325 dropping almost 20% from its late-2022 peak, Fortune reports (23).<\/p>\n The skilled trades, by contrast, offer something increasingly rare: work that AI genuinely cannot replicate, and that the AI era is actively making more valuable. As Randstad CEO Sander van’t Noordende put it to Fortune: “AI is now revealing just how critical these roles are and how elevated they are becoming (24).”<\/p>\n You May Also Like <\/p>\n Join 250,000+ readers and get Moneywise\u2019s best stories and exclusive interviews first \u2014 clear insights curated and delivered weekly. Subscribe now.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n Article Sources <\/p>\n We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n Fortune (1)<\/a>,(3)<\/a>,(9)<\/a>,(15)<\/a>,(16)<\/a>,(17)<\/a>,(19)<\/a>,(23)<\/a>,(24)<\/a>; CollegeVine (2)<\/a>; McKinsey (4)<\/a>; PR Newswire (5)<\/a>,(7)<\/a>; Randstad (6)<\/a>,(8)<\/a>; U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (10)<\/a>,(11)<\/a>,(12)<\/a>,(13)<\/a>,(14)<\/a>; CNBC (18)<\/a>; Construction Dive (20)<\/a>; ENR (21)<\/a>; Associated Builders and Contractors (22)<\/a><\/p>\n This article originally appeared on Moneywise.com<\/a> under the title: Nvidia CEO tells college grads that electricians, plumbers and iron workers have a leg up \u2013 and there\u2019s no degree needed<\/a><\/p>\n This article provides information only and should not be construed as advice. It is provided without warranty of any kind.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Jensen Huang showed up at Carnegie Mellon, the Nvidia CEO used his commencement address to the class…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":798043,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,166753,145222,5880,7780,318842,325376,2010,325375,325374,9593,63223,158,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-798042","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-carnegie-mellon","11":"tag-construction-workers","12":"tag-data-center","13":"tag-dave-ramsey","14":"tag-electricians","15":"tag-iron-workers","16":"tag-jensen-huang","17":"tag-randstad","18":"tag-randstad-north-america","19":"tag-robert-kiyosaki","20":"tag-skilled-trades","21":"tag-technology","22":"tag-united-states","23":"tag-unitedstates","24":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116578313230467851","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798042","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/798043"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}