Office Jobs Harder to Find, Gen Z Flocks to Blue-Collar Professions

Finding office work is becoming increasingly challenging for young people. The widespread use of artificial intelligence (AI) is pushing companies to automate and streamline operations, which in turn reduces the need for a range of administrative and clerical jobs.

Amid these conditions, Generation Z (Gen Z) is starting to explore alternative career paths. Jobs that rely on manual skills, known as blue-collar professions, are regaining popularity.

This trend is visible in the United States, where a number of schools are seeing surging interest in classes for carpentry, construction, manufacturing, and welding. Notably, blue-collar professions are no longer associated solely with manual labour; they have evolved into high-tech manufacturing roles.

One example can be found at Middleton High School in the US. The school has invested up to US$90 million, or around Rp1.5 trillion, to modernise its manufacturing laboratory.

In the laboratory, students not only learn to use manual tools but also operate smart robotic arms controlled via computer.

The school curriculum has begun reviving subjects that were popular in the 1990s and 2000s, such as construction, manufacturing, and woodworking. As a result, the modern vocational classes have attracted around 2,300 students in recent years.

High Pay Draws Gen Z to Technical Professions

One of the main attractions of these jobs is their earning potential. Quincy Millerjohn, a welding instructor, said workers in steel plants can earn between US$41 and US$52 per hour, or approximately Rp727,000 to Rp922,000 per hour.

“There is a paradigm shift. Manual work has become a high-skill, high-paying profession. This is very appealing to young people because they can directly create something with their own hands,” said John Mihm, an education consultant for the state government of Wisconsin, quoted on Saturday (15/8/2026).

According to Mihm, young people’s concerns about the threat of AI in the administrative sector are also driving this shift in interest. Gen Z is seeking physical skills that are considered harder to replace with digital algorithms.

This phenomenon is also visible within the AI industry itself. As technology companies streamline operations and cut office jobs, the need for technical workers to build AI infrastructure is actually increasing.

One profession in high demand is electrician, particularly for the construction and operation of AI data centres.

Television host Mike Rowe said AI companies in Silicon Valley are willing to pay young electricians hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.

In the Power Players podcast, Rowe recounted his experience meeting Gen Z electricians working at an AI data centre in Plano, Texas.

“The electricians I interviewed and met two months ago at a data centre in Plano, Texas, were all under 30 years old, and they were all making US$240,000 to US$280,000 per year,” Rowe said, quoted from India Today on Friday (31/7/2026).

Converted at an exchange rate of around Rp17,900 per US dollar, that income is equivalent to roughly Rp4.3 billion to Rp5 billion per year.

Rowe also noted that these young electricians have the opportunity to earn additional income through overtime. Moreover, their skills have led other companies to pursue them as well.

“They can work as much overtime as they want, have no debt, and all three were poached by other companies three times in the last 18 months,” he said.

AI Infrastructure Boom Lifts Demand for Technical Workers

The rising need for electricians is closely tied to the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure. Data centres are a critical component because AI systems require thousands of GPUs to run various models and services.

The greater the demand for AI, the more data centres must be built. This in turn creates new demand for construction workers and technical staff.

A Fortune report noted that construction workers involved in US data centre projects receive a wage premium of about 32% compared with workers on traditional construction projects. The additional income amounts to around US$81,800 per year.

The data centre construction trend is also growing rapidly in other countries. In India, for example, Google has announced a US$15 billion Google AI Hub project in Visakhapatnam. Meanwhile, Meta is building data centres through a partnership with Reliance Jio.

The scale of this infrastructure development is also tightening labour availability. The data centre construction sector is even described as one of the most capacity-constrained construction fields globally.

Beyond electricians, other blue-collar jobs such as plumbers, mechanics, general technicians, and construction workers also remain in high demand.

15 Jobs at Risk from AI

The shift in Gen Z interest towards technical work is inseparable from concerns about the future of office jobs. The World Economic Forum (WEF), through its Future of Jobs report, estimates that around 83 million jobs are at risk of disappearing during 2023-2027 due to technological change and automation.

The report also estimates that around 23% of jobs across various sectors will undergo change. The media, entertainment, and sports industry is one of the sectors projected to experience a major impact, with around 32% of its jobs potentially affected.