Gen Z keeps being told their chances of landing a job are slim as AI threatens entry-level jobs. But in reality, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says, there are thousands of jobs for young people, thanks to an accelerating boom in data centers. They just have to be willing to go to trade school.
“If you’re an electrician, you’re a plumber, a carpenter—we’re going to need hundreds of thousands of them to build all of these factories,” Huang told Channel 4 News in the U.K.
“The skilled craft segment of every economy is going to see a boom. You’ve going to have to be doubling and doubling and doubling every single year.”
And Huang is not just talking about the need—he’s backing it up with cash.
The chipmaker announced last week that it was investing $100 million into OpenAI to help fund the development of data centers based on Nvidia’s AI processors. Industrywide, global capital spending on data centers is projected to hit $7 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey.
A single 250,000-square-foot data center can employ up to 1,500 construction workers during its build-out—many earning more than $100,000, plus overtime—all without requiring a college degree. Once complete, about 50 full-time workers maintain the facility. But each of those jobs spurs another 3.5 in the surrounding economy.
Huang’s call for more electricians and plumbers aligns with his broader view that the next wave of opportunity lies in the physical side of technology rather than the software. When asked earlier this year what he would study if he were 20 again, Huang admitted he’d lean toward disciplines rooted in the physical sciences.
“For the young, 20-year-old Jensen, that’s graduated now, he probably would have chosen…more of the physical sciences than the software sciences,” he said.
Fortune reached out to Huang for further comment.
Huang isn’t the only CEO sounding the alarm about a looming shortage of skilled trades.
Earlier this year, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said he raised concerns with the White House—arguing that deportations of immigrant labor, combined with a lack of interest among young Americans, are creating a perfect storm for data center construction.
“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 at an energy conference in March. “We just don’t have enough.”
Just this week, Ford CEO Jim Farley echoed those concerns, pointing to the gap between Washington’s reshoring ambitions and the workforce to make it a reality.
“I think the intent is there, but there’s nothing to backfill the ambition,” Farley told Axios. “How can we reshore all this stuff if we don’t have people to work there?”
The U.S. is already short 600,000 factory workers and 500,000 construction workers, according to a June LinkedIn post from Farley.
And while the U.S. Department of Education has made the expansion of skilled trades programs a priority, some Gen Zers are already catching on.
Take Jacob Palmer, a 23-year-old from North Carolina. After graduating from high school, he decided college was not the right fit. Instead, he joined an apprenticeship program at a contracting firm and trained as an electrician.
By 21, he launched his own business—and last year grossed nearly $90,000. This year alone, he’s already hit six figures. Unlike many of his peers facing student debt and uncertain job prospects, he said simply: “I don’t owe anybody anything.”
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