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Key Takeaways
- Ford (F) CEO Jim Farley warned earlier this year that AI could leave many white-collar workers behind and urged a renewed focus on trade skills.
- Recent research from Microsoft (MSFT) suggests that manual labor jobs like roofers and tire builders are among the least likely to be replaced by AI.
- Despite a declining percentage of people saying college is “very important,” households with a college degree still earn significantly more than those without one.
For the past year, CEOs and founders have sounded the alarm, warning that AI could result in job loss and dramatically change the workforce.
Ford CEO Jim Farley is one leader cautioning that white collar workers should prepare for the potentially transformative impact of AI, arguing that some should consider trade work instead.
“I believe that AI and new technologies have an asymmetric impact on our economy—a lot of things are helped a lot and a lot of things are hurt,” Farley said in an interview with Walter Isaacson, a journalist and author, at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June 2025. “When you look at these openings in our economy, it’s very clear that the technology we’ve seen has left a lot of people behind. AI will leave a lot of white collar people behind.”
Isaacson pressed Farley on how the education system should respond to the new technology.
“We need to go back to the basics, to trade schools, and we need a society that doesn’t look down on people like that,” Farley said.
Trade schools teach students specific skills that allow them to pursue particular careers, such as being a welder, plumber, carpenter, cosmetologist, and more. Compared with a traditional four-year college, trade schools are generally more affordable, shorter in duration, and offer a more hands-on experience.
Which Jobs Are Most Protected From AI?
Recent research has indicated that the jobs least susceptible to being replaced by AI in the future are those that involve manual labor.
A Microsoft paper from earlier this year, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, found that some of the jobs least likely to be impacted by AI were roofers, massage therapists, and tire builders.
However, other researchers have found that AI hasn’t been used to replace workers—at least yet. A Yale Budget Lab study found that since ChatGPT was released in late 2022, there hasn’t been a significant disruption in the labor market due to the new technology.
The potential for rapid workforce disruption isn’t without precedent. Economists have compared today’s white-collar AI concerns to the manufacturing job losses during the globalization wave of the 1990s and 2000s—a shift that grew the U.S. economy overall but devastated blue-collar communities whose work moved overseas.
“The shock could be very rapid and very profound,” Chen Zhao, chief global strategist at Alpine Macroeconomics, recently warned. “You can have a very large displacement of workers that need to be somehow taken care of.”
The rise of AI and other societal shifts have meant that Farley isn’t the only one who has voiced more skepticism about the value of a college degree. A Gallup survey from earlier this year found that the percentage of Americans who said that college was “very important” fell from 75% in 2010 to just 35% in 2025.
Despite this polling, households with college degrees still tend to significantly outearn those without college degrees. A Federal Reserve Bank of New York study this year suggested that the wage premium for those with college degrees over those without has been growing, from about 60% in 2010 to about 68% in 2024.
