Earth movers prepare a site for a 2.5 million square foot AI data center Tuesday, March 24, 2026, in Independence, Mo. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel) Contrary to what lawmakers believe, AI is shifting jobs, not stealing them.
A few weeks ago, Meta and Google announced they are investing millions of dollars in skilled trade training. This builds on similar programs launched earlier this year by other technology companies — including OpenAI and Microsoft — to fund trade training and AI literacy.
These initiatives come at a pivotal time. AI has quickly become ubiquitous in society, from the generative AI chatbots that millions of Americans use each day to the algorithms that discreetly influence what we see and how we think.
Lingering behind this technological boom is a growing fear of job displacement. For years, politicians like Andrew Yang and California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) have warned that AI will render countless roles obsolete. While the transformation of existing jobs is more visible, workforce training programs highlight the positive pressures AI simultaneously creates for job creation and growth.
Labor disruption concerns are not new. This fear dominates every period of innovation and fuels preemptive government regulation and slower social adoption. In a new Reuters-Ipsos poll, 53 percent of the 4,531 respondents believed that AI would put them or someone in their household out of work. The survey respondents were spread across age, gender, and education level.
These worries are not always unfounded. There are serious concerns about job displacement, which differ from historical examples. Although the introduction of the ATM did not — as many feared at the time — eliminate bank tellers, AI’s impact is more widespread and more fundamental. Every day, Americans are interfacing with AI agents rather than customer representatives. Routine and administrative tasks are being automated, impacting college graduates seeking entry-level jobs. These are just the changes that have already occurred.
For the first time, even occupations requiring greater specialization and education are at risk of significant change: Software engineers, attorneys and journalists may also be confronting an existential threat to their jobs. Innovation is meant to increase social productivity, which necessarily means that less productive methods will be phased out.
Setting aside questions about whether AI can do these tasks better than a human worker, the more immediate concern is whether the government should protect workers against potential job loss. Some legislators say yes, advocating proposals such as universal basic income and collective bargaining protections to mitigate AI’s effects.
There is an urgency to act within Congress and state legislatures. As Sen. Elizabeth Warren warned (D-Mass.) earlier this year, AI will create a “full-blown crisis” and “now’s the time to prepare for it.” However, this perspective assumes a net loss when the situation is more dynamic.
Innovation is not sustained on its own. Comments like Warren’s ignore that, with AI advancements, the other side of job displacement is job creation. AI is, at its core, just hardware and code: It needs electricity, maintenance and other infrastructure to run. Without human intervention, there is no AI.
Moreover, the infrastructure does not build itself, and there is a significant gap between the skilled workers needed to build AI systems and those who are available. This gap is expected to get worse as more workers retire from these industries than young professionals enter. By 2030, an estimated 2.1 million skilled trade jobs may go unfilled, resulting in a potential economic loss of $1 trillion annually.
That’s why Meta is investing $115 million in the first year alone to train fiber technicians, welders, plumbers, electricians and other skilled trade workers, and guarantee a job for all graduating participants. Likewise, Google just committed $50 million to train 300,000 American workers in skilled trades. These occupations may differ from those reduced or made more productive, but they can provide displaced workers with a pathway to a new vocation.
The shift to the skilled trades is part of a broader, more nuanced trend in job growth. MIT economist David Autor argues that exposure to automation doesn’t capture the full picture, since technology both replaces and augments expertise. AI can enable more people to do expert tasks.
This is the trend that Harvard Business School Professor Suraj Srinivasan is seeing. After ChatGPT’s 2022 launch, job postings for roles with structured and repetitive tasks decreased by 13 percent, while employer demand for jobs that require more analytical, technical or creative skills grew by 20 percent. For roles that could be enhanced by AI, demand grew.
While there are some tasks that AI can perform far better than a human, these new programs and trends show that the choice between innovation and jobs may not be as rigid as we once believed. Despite what the politicians say, there is still good reason to hold on to the promise of AI.
Rachel Chiu is a recent graduate of Yale Law School, a contributor for Young Voices, and a visiting fellow at Independent Women’s Center for AI and Technology.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Andrew Yang Artificial Intelligence Big Tech layoffs California Gov. Gavin Newsom ChatGPT Collective bargaining Employment and Training Programs Gavin Newsom Google job creation job displacement Meta Meta AI Microsoft OpenAI skilled trades tech jobs trade jobs Universal Basic Income WarrenCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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