Trending Articles
Trending Topics
Trending
Lost your job because of AI? It’s time to retrain with a trade.
Hiring for skilled trades is growing at three times the rate as professional roles, according to a study by talent company Randstad, which notes that the debate around AI job losses is focused on white-collar disruption rather than the benefits to skilled trades workers required to build the necessary infrastructure.
After all, as Randstad notes, AI can’t build data centres.
Indeed, Randstad said that skilled trades have become a major limiting factor to data centre and AI growth, exacerbated by the fact that more people are leaving the sector than joining.
Demand for traditional skilled trades – think construction workers, welders, electricians – is up by 27% over the past four years, while professional roles have grown by 19%. Demand has more than doubled for robotics techs, and is up 67% for HVAC engineers, needed to install and maintain cooling systems in data centres. It now takes longer to hire a skilled tradesperson than it does a desk-based professional.
“The digital revolution underway has a physical foundation,” said Sander van’t Noordende, Randstad CEO. “While headlines focus on AI and the future of white-collar work, the real constraint on global growth is the scarcity of specialized talent in the skilled trades. This means the people who build the data centres, upgrade the power grids and maintain the infrastructure that makes AI possible.”
Randstad noted that skilled trades have also been impacted by the shift to digital, and require training in some of the same areas as so-called knowledge workers – so if you are a digital worker who has lost work to AI, at least you’ve got a leg up there.
“The demand for skilled trades is evolving into highly specialised, digital-first work,” van’t Noordende said. “Because these roles now demand the same continuous learning as knowledge workers, we must fundamentally re-rate the skilled trades as a top-tier career track.”
He added: “Leaders must adapt by prioritizing investments in education, skilling, and training. Failing to do this will stall the AI-fueled growth we seek to achieve.”
Of course, some of that work is temporary: we’re in the middle of a data centre building boom and that’s driving an increase in demand for connections to the power grid. Once AI comes out of its hype cycle and either crashes or becomes a normal part of day-to-day life, that work will presumably plateau to some degree – though having skills developed now for actually useful works will never go out of style.
Indeed, a recent report by the Action to Protect Rural Scotland suggested the government was inflating the job benefits of data centres, pointing to claims for a Northumberland AI Growth Zone that promised 3,400 roles would be created.
That was later “clarified” to mean 2,700 “indirect and induced jobs” and just 100 people at the data centre itself – but there would be 1,200 construction jobs while it was being built, at least.
