Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is the latest tech leader to champion skilled trades over traditional office careers, suggesting the AI boom will create “six-figure salaries” for the workers building the infrastructure to support it.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, Huang, a leading figure in the field of artificial intelligence, expressed optimism regarding AI’s effect on the job market, CNBC said in a report.
“This is the largest infrastructure build-out in human history that’s going to create a lot of jobs,” Huang said.
It’s wonderful that the jobs are related to trade craft, and we’re going to have plumbers and electricians and construction and steel workers, and network technicians, and people who install and fit out the equipment.
Huang also noted a “quite a significant boom” in this sector, reporting that salaries have almost doubled.
He went on to state that the individuals constructing chip, computer, or AI factories are commanding “six-figure salaries.”
AI infrastructure fuels a skilled trades boom
The topic of job displacement due to AI has been a major focus at WEF this week.
This follows data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, which indicated that the technology was linked to nearly 55,000 layoffs in the US in 2025, according to their December report.
In 2025, companies including Amazon, Salesforce, Accenture, and Lufthansa attributed employee layoffs to advancements in AI.
AI is impacting the job market “like a tsunami,” and according to Kristalina Georgieva, the managing director of the International Monetary Fund, most nations and businesses are unprepared for it.
Contrary to the common belief that automation disproportionately targets manual labour, a 2025 study by Microsoft yielded surprising results.
Their research indicated that blue-collar positions were, in fact, the most resilient to automation and therefore least susceptible to job displacement and layoffs.
The roles identified as being safer ranged significantly, encompassing specialised medical technicians such as phlebotomists, various skilled trades like painters and plasterers, general labourers or helpers, and technical roles like ship engineers.
This suggests that the human elements of dexterity, unpredictable environments, and specialised physical tasks in these professions offer a buffer against current automation technologies.
Analysing 200,000 interactions with Microsoft Bing Copilot between January and September 2024, the study investigated the extent to which users relied on the chatbot for task completion.
The findings revealed that professionals engaged in physical work, involving either people or machinery, were the least dependent on AI assistance.
Enroll in vocational education
Speaking at the WEF, Roxana Mînzatu, EVP for social rights and skills, quality jobs, and preparedness at the European Commission, advised young people to pursue vocational training as a means of securing blue-collar positions.
She added that they were looking for 75,000 vocationally trained people, including technicians and those with different types of degrees.
She expressed confidence in the younger generation’s ability to acquire the necessary skills, stating, “I’m not that concerned about the ability of the young generation to be able to have the right skills for that,” when addressing the worry that AI might eliminate entry-level positions and thus increase difficulty in entering the job market.
Gen Z (individuals born between 1997 and 2012) is increasingly drawn to blue-collar professions, largely due to the escalating expense of obtaining a bachelor’s degree in the United States, according to the report.
While Gen Z accounted for 18% of the workforce in the first quarter of 2024, as reported by the Department of Labor, they represented a disproportionately large share—nearly 25%—of new hires in skilled trade work during that same year, according to data from Gusto.
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