General Motors CEO Mary Barra has a simple message for high school students weighing their career options: Don’t overlook the skilled trades.
On a recent episode of Fortune’s Titans and Disruptors of Industry podcast, the 64-year-old automotive leader said that blue-collar careers could offer more protection from artificial intelligence than some white-collar paths—and still give Gen Z a shot at six-figure earnings.
“[We need to] really make sure high school students understand this is a great career and frankly maybe a little more AI-proof than some others,” Barra said, adding that a technician could make $80,000 to $90,000. “Potentially even higher, depending on how many hours they work.”
The opportunities extend well beyond the automotive industry. An estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs could go unfilled nationally by 2030, according to the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, a coalition formed over the summer by BlackRock, Carhartt, Ford Motor Company, and Google to address the labor gap.
Barra pointed specifically to the growing demand for electricians, fueled in part by the data center boom powering the expansion of AI. More than 300,000 new electricians are estimated to be needed over the next decade to meet demand.
Mary Barra’s career started on the assembly line, following in her blue-collar father’s footsteps
For Barra, who is ranked No. 2 Most Powerful Woman on Fortune’s 2026 list, the conversation around skilled trades is personal. Both of her parents grew up during the Great Depression, and her father worked at GM for 39 years as a die maker. His background helped shape Barra’s appreciation for the people who build things—and the value of hard work.
“I had that instinct of we work before we play, and we work hard,” she told Fortune Editor-in-Chief Alyson Shontell.
Barra would eventually follow her father into the auto industry. She attended the General Motors Institute (now Kettering University), where she began working as a co-op student on the assembly line as a quality inspector at GM’s Pontiac Motor Division. Her first full-time job was as an electrical engineer in 1985—and she slowly began climbing the GM ranks, from plant manager at GM’s Detroit Hamtramck assembly plant in 2003 to eventually CEO in 2014.
But today, Barra said the U.S. faces a broader “societal problem” where skilled trades are treated as less desirable than white-collar professions.
“I frankly think this is an area where Europe has much more respect for the trades and the importance of people who do very technical things but work with their hands and build things and make things and service things,” Barra told Fortune.
GM, for its part, has invested nearly $200 million to grow and modernize high‑demand skilled trades as well as advanced manufacturing, engineering, and technician roles. The funding is being used to ramp up community-based training as well as upgrade manufacturing facilities, technical centers, and dealership service bays. GM already placed approximately 90 new skilled trades apprentices across its U.S. manufacturing divisions in April.
From Jamie Dimon to Larry Fink, CEOs are sounding the alarm over America’s skilled-trades shortage
The shortage of skilled labor isn’t just on the minds of CEOs like Barra, whose companies directly employ thousands of blue-collar workers. Business leaders across industries are increasingly warning that the U.S. doesn’t have enough talent with the technical skills needed to build everything from factories to data centers to warships.
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, for example, has warned that the shortage could become a major obstacle to American investment, particularly as the U.S. looks to expand its defense-industrial base.
“We need 300,000 electricians, welders, etc. to build ships in the next five or 10 years,” Dimon said in July, speaking from the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
“It fits what we call the American dream: getting kids skills or all workers’ skills that they have jobs that could pay $80,000, $90,000, $100,000 a year after you know a year or two of training. This lifts up America. It helps build the defense industry,” Dimon added.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink has similarly questioned whether young people can continue to rely on the traditional path of going to college and landing a white-collar office job.
“The speed at which AI is changing, we’re not adapting our society fast enough,” Fink said at BlackRock’s 2026 Infrastructure Summit in March. “Really, post-World War II, the pathway to a white-collar job was a college education, and AI is going to disrupt many of those types of jobs.”
Fink, however, sees a bright spot in the disruption: the growing need for hands-on skills.
“AI is going to create a lot of skilled job needs,” Fink said. “And the biggest issue confronting our country today and other countries is the speed at which this change is occurring.”
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