Blue-collar hero and former host of “Dirty Jobs” Mike Rowe says claims of a massive deficit of trades workers in the United States are not hyperbole.
Rowe spoke at the Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit, where he sounded the alarm on a serious lack of young people going into the trades.
Providing stories from employers, politicians, and even the military, Rowe stressed the need to move away from computer programming and coding in favor of tougher, more traditional career paths.
‘I know where they are. They’re in the eighth grade.’
“We’ve been telling kids for 15 years to learn to code,” Rowe told an audience at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He then delivered a stark warning to those who may have followed Joe Biden’s infamous “learn to code” advice in 2019.
“Well, AI is coming for the coders,” Rowe remarked.
From there, the 63-year-old dropped some industry knowledge, detailing that the demand for tradespeople was not going away anytime soon: “[AI is] not coming for the welders, the plumbers, the steamfitters, the pipe fitters, the HVAC. They’re not coming for the electricians.”
Adopting a more serious tone, Rowe leaned into the audience to deliver the jaw-dropping numbers of exactly how many trade jobs remain vacant in the United States.
Recalling his time at the Aspen Ideas Festival in late June, Rowe said billionaire investor and BlackRock CEO Larry Fink told him the U.S. needs “500,000 electricians in the next couple of years — not hyperbole.”
“This is me being the alarmist again,” Rowe continued, now tapping into America’s military industrial needs.
“The BlueForge Alliance, who oversees our maritime industrial base — that’s 15,000 individual companies who are collectively charged with building and delivering three nuclear-powered subs to the Navy every year for 10 years.”
Rowe explained that the head of the alliance called him and said, “We’re having a hell of a time finding tradespeople. Can you help?”
Rowe replied, “I don’t know, man, it’s pretty skinny out there. How many do you need?”
The man indicated to Rowe that the industry needed 140,000 people over the next seven years.
“They need 80 to 90 thousand right now,” Rowe emphasized. “These are for our submarines, folks. [If] things go hypersonic — a little sideways with China, Taiwan — our aircraft carriers are no longer the point of the spear. They’re vulnerable.”
Rowe added, “Our submarines matter, and these guys have a pinch point because they can’t find welders and electricians to get them built.”
The Trump administration drastically increased naval production in April 2025 through an executive order that placed at least $40 billion per year into shipbuilding efforts for the next 30 years.
With fewer than 300 battle force ships in the U.S. Navy currently, according to Military Times, the president set a goal for a 381-ship fleet.
To that end, the Discovery Channel host said he is consistently getting calls from tradespeople, companies, and even governors, who ask him a simple question.
“Where are they?” they ask Rowe, referring to tradespeople. “They’ve said, ‘We’ve looked everywhere.’”
Rowe revealed his response to industry leaders: “I know where they are. They’re in the eighth grade.”
The trades advocate stressed that a “clear and present freak-out” was happening under the surface in America in the automotive and energy industries, suggesting that children need to be encouraged to go into these fields.
“The automotive industry needs 80,000 collision repair and technicians,” he explained. “Energy, I don’t even know what the number is — I hear 300,000; I hear 500,000.”
The latter is likely to do with not only nuclear-powered subs but also small modular reactors that are popping up across the United States to supply the growing power demand from data centers, new and old.
Several large companies like Amazon and Microsoft are building new, massive data centers and campuses to house data and AI machine-learning systems. These new locations require so much power that they have put stress on existing power grids, necessitating their own energy sources.
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