As executives race to boost productivity and automate work with AI, workers have been left to ponder an existential question: How much work will actually be left for humans? But if you ask Jensen Huang—the CEO of the world’s most valuable company, Nvidia—the answer is plenty.
“Don’t forget the chip plants that are being created—packaging, computer plants, and all of the AI factories being created—hundreds of thousands of jobs are being created as we speak,” Huang said on Fox Business last week.
The billionaire was responding to newfound concerns from Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates about AI’s disruption of the workforce. Gates warned in a letter last week that the technology is being underestimated and could ultimately lead to massive unemployment. Huang, meanwhile, has remained optimistic that AI will create more jobs than it eliminates.
“Everybody’s job changes,” Huang said. “Some jobs will be eliminated. Many new jobs will be created. If you go back and look at history and technology, revolutionary technology comes along, incredible advances come along.”
Huang added that white-collar jobs aren’t going anywhere anytime soon, while predicting a major boom in the skilled trades. The massive infrastructure buildout fueling the AI boom is already driving demand for hundreds of thousands of skilled plumbers, electricians, technicians, and other six-figure earning workers needed to build and maintain the technology.
“Having a large population of skilled labor and people who build things, that make things with their hands, is tremendous for the United States,” the 63-year-old said.
Huang has been bullish on the skilled trades
Huang, who has an estimated net worth of $180 billion, has been calling for greater attention to the skilled trades for months.
“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. in September 2025. “The skilled craft segment of every economy is going to see a boom. You’re going to have to be doubling and doubling and doubling every single year.”
At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, this past January, Huang added the world is on the cusp of what he calls the “largest infrastructure build-out in human history,” which will create “a lot of jobs.”
While Huang often frames that buildout as beneficial for the broader U.S. economy, it is also increasingly critical to Nvidia’s own growth. The company’s chips power the data centers at the heart of the AI boom, and building those facilities requires far more than advanced semiconductors. It takes thousands of skilled workers to get power plants, electrical systems, and cooling infrastructure online.
In early August, Nvidia committed up to $105 billion for the credit and commitment for a new OpenAI data center in Piketon, Ohio, which has been billed as one of the world’s largest data centers.
SB Energy, a SoftBank Group company, is leading the project’s development and is hiring for a range of roles, including skilled positions that pay well above the local average. One power-generation project manager position, for example, lists a salary of $140,000 to $170,000. That’s more than twice the median household income of roughly $55,000 in the area, where the population is fewer than 27,000, according to regional nonprofit OhioSE.
As Jensen Huang highlights skilled-trade opportunities, a talent gap persists
Huang isn’t alone in highlighting the opportunities emerging in the skilled trades.
Earlier this year, Jon Gray, president and chief operating officer at Blackstone, said there is likely to be a “huge boom in blue-collar employment certainly over the next five years.”
One of Blackstone’s portfolio companies, QTS, operates or is developing more than 75 data centers worldwide. Roughly 10,000 workers were on QTS job sites a year ago. By the end of 2026, that number is expected to quadruple to 40,000—a 300% increase.
“Between the energy, the physical infrastructure, the data centers, the reindustrialization—something very powerful [is] happening,” Gray said.
But the country faces a major challenge in filling those jobs: There aren’t enough skilled workers to meet the demand.
An estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs could go unfilled nationally by 2030, ranging from the estimated 130,000 additional electrical workers needed by 2030 to the more than 350,000 new auto technicians needed by 2029.
Leaders at BlackRock, Carhartt, Ford Motor Company, and Google recently announced the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, a partnership aimed at expanding skilled-trades training across 30 states, with plans to eventually reach workers nationwide.
“No single company or industry can prepare a country for this opportunity on its own,” the executives, including Ford’s Jim Farley, said in a Fortune commentary piece. “However, we can help address these challenges and strengthen pathways to opportunity for people and their families – if we act together.”
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