As AI wipes out white-collar jobs, one Alabama high school and Toyota are training students for roles that pay $40 an hour and can’t be automated

The U.S. has a dire shortage of skilled tradespeople. A school in Huntsville, Ala., is attempting to replenish the talent pool—one teenager at a time. The Huntsville Center for Technology (HCT) is a new $40 million facility where 700 students leave their traditional high school for part of the day to receive industry-standard training. The school, which will send off its first graduates this spring, features a specialized “Inditech” program developed through a direct partnership with Toyota Alabama, supported by a $1 million investment from Toyota’s charitable endowment. The school’s principal, Zac Mcwhorter, told Fortune the program launched as a reaction to the town’s biggest employment gaps. Toyota’s facility in Huntsville is one of its biggest in the U.S., assembling nearly half of the car company’s engines in North America. “We asked what is a specific program or pathway that you guys need and we can address,” he said. “They said they needed more industrial maintenance workers. So the Inditech program came about through the collaboration with Toyota Alabama.” Many workers in the skilled trades today are of retirement age, and a looming shortage risks costing the U.S. $1 trillion a year, according to some estimates. The U.S. needs about 1.9 million manufacturing workers by 2033, according to 2025 data from the National Association of Manufacturers. The problem has grown even more dire as data center developers seek skilled electricians, construction workers, and other trades professionals to help build the massive AI infrastructure buildout. Ford CEO Jim Farley has said the U.S. is short more than one million workers in what he calls the “essential economy,” the blue-collar sectors that get things “moved, built, or fixed.” He said the country is short 600,000 factory workers and 500,000 construction workers. On the flip side, there’s an oversupply of college-educated white-collar workers in today’s economy. AI automation stands to replace large swath