Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says electricians and plumbers will be needed by the hundreds of thousands in the new working world

Gen Z keeps being told their chances of landing a job are slim as AI threatens entry-level jobs. But in reality, Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang says, there are thousands of jobs for young people, thanks to an accelerating boom in data centers. They just have to be willing to go to trade school. “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 late 2025. “The skilled craft segment of every economy is going to see a boom. You’ve going to have to be doubling and doubling and doubling every single year.” And Huang is not just talking about the need—he’s backing it up with cash. Trade jobs are hot right now: Construction workers can earn more than $100K without a college degree The chipmaker announced last year that it was investing $100 billion into OpenAI to help fund the development of data centers based on Nvidia’s AI processors. Industrywide, global capital spending on data centers is projected to hit $7 trillion by 2030, according to McKinsey. A single 250,000-square-foot data center can employ up to 1,500 construction workers during its build-out—many earning more than $100,000, plus overtime—all without requiring a college degree. Once complete, about 50 full-time workers maintain the facility. But each of those jobs spurs another 3.5 in the surrounding economy. Huang’s call for more electricians and plumbers aligns with his broader view that the next wave of opportunity lies in the physical side of technology rather than the software. When asked what he would study if he were 20 again, Huang admitted he’d lean toward disciplines rooted in the physical sciences. “For the young, 20-year-old Jensen, that’s graduated now, he probably would have chosen…more of the physical sciences than the software sciences,” he said. CEOs agree: It’s out with the white-collar jobs, in with the blue-collar Huang isn’t the only CEO sounding the alarm a