For many young graduates, especially those in Gen Z, the job market currently feels unstable. Companies are cutting back, tariffs are changing business plans, and artificial intelligence is already reshaping who gets hired and who doesn’t. But Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang believes the biggest high-paying opportunities of the next decade won’t be found in offices or tech chat rooms. Instead, they’ll be found on construction sites.
AI boom could open six-figure jobs, says Nvidia CEO – What are they?
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Huang said the global effort to build massive AI data centers is about to unlock a wave of well-paid jobs for electricians, plumbers, construction workers, and steelworkers, many of them paying six figures.
As tech companies race to expand their AI capacity, the scale of construction involved is massive. Huang said the world is entering “the largest infrastructure buildout in human history.” By the end of this decade, global spending on new data centres and AI infrastructure is expected to reach $7 trillion. And all of it has to be built by people.
“It’s wonderful that the jobs are related to tradecraft, and we’re going to have plumbers and electricians and construction and steelworkers,” Huang said during a conversation with BlackRock CEO Larry Fink at Davos.
These facilities, including chip factories, computer factories, and AI factories, require highly skilled, hands-on labour. And right now, there simply aren’t enough trained workers to meet the demand.
Do these jobs require a college degree? Huang answers
One of Huang’s key points was that many of these jobs do not require a college degree, yet still offer strong pay and long-term stability. According to a McKinsey report, between 2023 and 2030, the United States alone will need an additional 130,000 trained electricians. On top of that, the country will need around 240,000 construction labourers and 150,000 construction supervisors.
Many of these roles already pay more than $100,000 a year. “Everybody should be able to make a great living,” Huang said. “You don’t need to have a PhD in computer science to do so.”
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, electrician jobs are expected to grow by 9% over the next decade.
This isn’t the first time Huang has spoken about a coming boom in skilled trade jobs driven by AI and infrastructure growth. Last year, he told Channel 4 News in the UK that the demand for skilled workers would keep growing. “The skilled craft segment of every economy is going to see a boom,” he said. “You’re going to have to be doubling and doubling and doubling every single year.”
Meanwhile, not everyone is as optimistic in tone. Ford CEO Jim Farley has repeatedly warned that AI is shrinking traditional white-collar entry-level jobs. “There’s more than one way to the American Dream, but our whole education system is focused on four-year [college] education,” Farley said at the Aspen Ideas Festival last year.
He added that entry-level hiring at tech companies has dropped sharply. “Hiring an entry worker at a tech company has fallen 50% since 2019,” Farley said. “Is that really where we want all of our kids to go? Artificial intelligence is gonna replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US.”
