The United States can’t actualize its moonshot AI goals if it’s lacking key workers to bolster the infrastructure necessary to build the technology, according to Ford CEO Jim Farley.
With AI predicted to balloon to a $4.8 trillion market by 2033, Farley warned the U.S. has overlooked the labor needed to build and sustain data centers and manufacturing facilities. While President Donald Trump imposed sweeping tariffs to revive factory jobs, in U.S. manufacturing, recruitment and retention problems remain.
“I think the intent is there, but there’s nothing to backfill the ambition,” Farley told Axios in September 2025. “How can we reshore all this stuff if we don’t have people to work there?”
Farley’s concern about staffing AI data centers and factories is part of what he identifies as a crisis affecting the “essential economy” of blue-collar workers making up $12 trillion in U.S. GDP, per the Aspen Institute. The Ford CEO has said that AI could wipe out half of white-collar jobs, while creating mass demand for skilled trades.
But the labor force to fill this growing clamor for workers isn’t there, Farley said. The country is short 600,000 factory workers and 500,000 construction workers right now, and will need 400,000 auto technicians over the next three years, he wrote in a LinkedIn post in June 2025.
