AI Is Powering a Blue‑Collar Hiring Boom Few Saw Coming

Demand for electricians, welders, and technicians is surging—putting a hard limit on how fast AI can scale.

BY BRUCE CRUMLEY @BRUCEC_INC

Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Adobe Stock

The spread of artificial intelligence tools automating a wide range of employees’ work tasks has sparked considerable fears that the apps may eventually take over jobs that millions of humans now perform. But a new study warns that surging adoption of the tech by businesses may hit an unexpected wall unless far more skilled trade workers are trained to build and maintain the infrastructure and other support AI needs just to operate.

That scenario was explored in a recent analysis by Dutch recruitment company Randstad, which challenges the notion that AI use will soon unleash millions of net job losses. While it’s probably inevitable that some companies will use apps and bots to cut their headcounts, Randstad said continuing development and deployment of the tech are generating far more employment opportunities in other areas of the labor market. Chief among those is work in a variety of skilled trades that support the manufacturing and servicing of infrastructure that AI needs to function.“The debate around AI’s impact on jobs often speculates on job displacement, but a critical reality is being overlooked: The technology is spurring soaring demand for skilled trade talent required to train, implement, and sustain it,” Randstad’s blog post earlier this month said. “These roles are increasingly highly specialized, digital-first positions. From electricians to robot technicians, digital fluency is now a prerequisite.”But with businesses having largely prioritized college degrees over manual skills as hiring criteria in recent decades, there’s now a shortfall of qualified workers that companies developing or using AI desperately need. That critical labor is focused on building, equipping, and maintaining data centers and other infrastructure the tech relies on to operate, but is insufficient to satisfy demand.

For example, since generative AI started becoming more affordable and accessible to businesses in 2022, Randstad’s analysis of recruiting activity found that the demand for many skilled trade workers more than doubled compared with the demand for knowledge employees. Jobs for robotics technicians surged 107 percent in the past four years, openings for heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) engineers increased 67 percent, and recruitment of industrial automation workers rose 51 percent.

But surging employment opportunities created by the tech weren’t limited to just those relatively geekish skilled trades. Demand for construction workers has increased 30 percent since 2022, demand for welders has increased by 27 percent, and recruitment of electricians has increased by 18 percent.

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More broadly, Randstad found traditional skilled trades benefited from “sustained growth, up 27 percent over the past four years.” That represented “11 percentage points above the overall market average and 19 percentage points above desk-based professional roles.”That changing dynamic is having three main consequences.

The first is that it allowed skilled blue-collar workers to flip decades of recruiting history by becoming the hottest ticket on the labor market. “Hiring a skilled tradesperson now takes longer (56 days) than a desk-based professional (54 days),” Randstad’s post said of the reversal of previous demand imbalances.

The second consequence is that there aren’t enough skilled workers to fill all the jobs companies developing and using AI need to expand their breakneck activity. One example of that, Randstad’s analysis said, is that “for every 100 young people entering the manufacturing sector, 102 leave.”

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