41% of Trades Workers Retire by 2031 — Here's Who Gets Paid to Replace Them

**Carlo Thompson** (0:00)
So, the machine displacing desk workers is, right now, creating a shortage of the people it needs to physically exist.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:08)
Artificial, system online.

**Ainsley** (0:21)
So Randstad analyzed 50 million job posting.
Skilled trades are growing three times faster than professional roles. Robotic technician demand is up 107%, HVAC engineers is up 67%, electricians is up 18%, construction workers is up 30%. That's not a blip. This is a structural realignment happening in real time. And every 100 young people entering manufacturing, 102 leave. The pipeline is going in the wrong direction, while the demand is accelerating.
Welcome back to Surviving AI with Carlo Thompson. I'm Carlo Thompson. Ainsley is here. We're going to talk about physical intelligence. The body has skills. The cloud will never run.

**Carlo Thompson** (1:20)
The number that stops me is the manufacturing drain, 102 leaving for every 100 entering. That's not a gap. That's a structural bleed happening quietly, while everyone's attention is on the white color disruption story.
And here's what makes it stranger. The demand side is being driven by the very technology people assume is coming for physical work. The data centers that run AI can't be built by AI.
Electrical work alone accounts for 45 to 70 percent of total data center construction costs. And there aren't enough electricians to do it. So the machine displacing desk workers is right now, creating a shortage of the people it needs to physically exist. The question I'd put to someone listening who's been in a knowledge worker role for 10 years is, when did physical become a consolation prize in your mind? And is that assumption still earning its keep?

**Ainsley** (2:16)
I think for some people, you know, physical is, it's not all of what it's cracked up to be because physical is physical, right? And I don't know if people are prepared to do that just generally. So I think there's going to be people that's cut out for physical work and people that's not. But, you know, if we look at just a structural problem on a whole and put the trades off to the side, there's still additional work that requires some level of white collar working, right? But the pivot may not be that, you know, I'm going to move from this white collar desk job to a physical trade like, you know, electrician. It could be that I'm going to move from this industry, banking or something else to, you know, infrastructure company like XAI or something, right? That could be the pivot. And that's what we're going to talk about in this episode because, you know, a lot of the times are through the history of this podcast, we also talked about trades, right? We talked about trades a lot and specifically electricians, plumbers and so on and so forth. This is kind of a continuation of that, but more specific to the parts that you could take part in, you know, and potentially move your skills to.
There's a lot of things that's happening, right? And if I'm being honest, people will be uncomfortable in some of this if the impact arrives the way people are suggesting. So, you know, the things that we talked about in the show was, you know, things like geographic arbitrage. So maybe it's not that you're switching industry and staying in a location you are, maybe you're moving.
And sometimes people are not completely happy with moving cross-country for an opportunity, but maybe that's what needs to be done. But the physical part is what we're talking about. And some of these physical things and some of the roles that we're going to mention here requires people to be in that location. Right? If you live in, you know, New Jersey and there's a data center built happening and you are an electrician or HVAC tech, you might have to travel to Texas, you know, to work there for six months or something like this.
Whatever that looks like. So this geographic arbitrage I think is part of the story. And the other part of this story is that physical intelligence is something that we have right now. And it might have stay in power to suggest that it could be there for a while.

**Carlo Thompson** (4:59)
The framing I'd push on slightly is the binary of physical trade versus white-collar desk job. Because I think you're right that most people won't make that full jump. And the more interesting territory is actually the hybrid layer. The person who understands data center infrastructure well enough to manage the project, coordinate the electrical contractors, handle compliance, that's a role that requires physical presence and spatial judgment without requiring you to pull wire yourself.