Jim Farley is president and CEO of the Ford Motor Co. Walter Isaacson is a biographer and author of “The Innovators.”
In September 1958, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed into law the National Defense Education Act. It was enacted in the midst of the space race, responding to the need for greater science and math education. And it was transformative.
Along with related programs such as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, the NDEA helped send Americans to the moon and laid the groundwork for the modern tech industry. These programs made the United States both safer and more competitive.
They also provide a model for what the U.S. can accomplish when it adopts a national strategy. Today, we need the same level of ambition to revitalize the essential economy — that is, everything that is built, moved and fixed in this country. this economy represents 52 million jobs and nearly one-third of the nation’s gross domestic product. It’s the foundation of Americans’ daily lives, but it has been neglected for too long — and the cracks are showing.
The fact is, some of the great achievements of the NDEA — including vastly increasing the number of people who earn college degrees — may have contributed to the essential economy’s current problems. Since the 1950s, college attendance has gone up while the talent pipeline for the trades has withered.
The result is massive shortages of workers in key industries which, combined with regulatory delays and a lack of good training is stifling productivity — even as it’s growing in white-collar industries.
A little economic inefficiency is one thing. But this is a crisis. A 2025 study by the Aspen Institute found that if productivity in the essential economy had kept pace over the past two decades with its growth over the previous 20 years or so, U.S. GDP would be roughly 10 percent higher today.
And then there’s tomorrow. What happens when the country keeps growing, and its ability to build roads, factories and houses falls even further behind?
The lack of capacity to build things effectively — ships, roads, power plants, housing — makes the U.S. less competitive, less safe and less able to weather an economic storm.
That’s why the two of us — one an industrial CEO, the other a journalist and observer of American life — are taking on this problem. We believe that fixing this situation will require a national movement. The good news: Since we started talking about the essential economy at the 2025 Aspen Ideas Festival, we have seen meaningful commitments by business and government to start dealing with the issue.
The initial focus is on the skilled trades — the backbone of the essential economy. This summer, Ford, BlackRock, Carhartt and Google founded the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades with the goal of understanding the problem and training the next generation of tradespeople.
On Sept. 30, the alliance released “The State of America’s Skilled Trades: A National Report.” It goes through the issues state by state and trade by trade — what’s working and what needs to change. For example: The country needs to fill 1.7 million trade jobs every year for the next decade. But for every 100 workers needed, only 55 are being trained.
Partly that’s because only about half the individuals who enroll in a training course complete it. Often, these students fall away for lack of wraparound services — such as child care or funds for transportation — or the opportunity to earn while studying. This gap between enrollment and completion is a strain on educational resources, students’ finances and the businesses that can’t fill jobs. It’s like setting money on fire.
It doesn’t have to be this way, because what works is clear. For example, according to the alliance report, some apprenticeships boast a completion rate of 90 percent or more. Apprenticeships and other programs that help connect students directly with jobs are the key.
But training is only half the battle. More kids need to see the trades as an option for a well-paid job that makes them proud. Research by the Ad Council, a nonpartisan national nonprofit, found that only about half of school counselors recommend trade school to students. Young people are still, by and large, being told to go to college — even if that’s not the right path for them.
It’s time to change the culture and give these jobs the respect they deserve. It’s also why we’re calling on CEOs to put their resources behind a new Ad Council campaign to change perceptions about the trades.
Changing training, changing culture and changing policies that make it hard to build things in America — all these are big problems that will take time to solve. That’s why we need a national strategy.
That doesn’t mean a single federal law. In fact, many of the best solutions around training and high school education should be implemented at the local level. But it will require a national effort to quantify what it would take — in dollars, in people, in policies — to reenergize the trades and the entire essential economy.
In 1958, Americans looked to the sky. Today, let’s look to the earth — to the roads, the pipes and the buildings that make our lives possible. The country demands it. And the next generation deserves it.
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