By Michael B. Kelley
Publication Date: 2026-09-30 11:07:00
Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang, sitting on a panel next to SpaceX (SPCX) and Tesla (TSLA) CEO Elon Musk as corporate AI leaders spent most of the day at the White House, said the AI data center buildout will create “probably about a million jobs.”
Huang added that “this is the first time in probably… 50 years [that] we’re re-industrializing the United States, creating a whole bunch of blue collar jobs.”
As Yahoo Finance’s Brian Sozzi details, the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades (AAST) — an initiative launched by BlackRock (BLK), Carhartt, Ford (F), and Google (GOOG) — estimates that the US will need to fill 1.7 million skilled trades job openings annually through 2035.
Nvidia, Meta (META), and Microsoft (MSFT) are joining AAST this week.
Read more: AI in America has a huge 1.7 million job shortage problem
AAST defines skilled trade jobs as the 124 occupations — including carpenters, electricians, mechanics of various kinds, plumbers, and pipe fitters — that “build, install, operate, maintain, repair, fabricate, or extract the physical materials, products, equipment, systems, and infrastructure the U.S. economy relies on.”
Current training programs produce just 55 workers for every 100…
