The workers who keep America’s buildings running are disappearing—and the U.S. isn’t replacing them fast enough to keep the lights on, the servers cool, or the labs sterile.
The commercial real estate giant calls the electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, pipe fitters, and maintenance workers who maintain the country’s built environment a “silent army”—a workforce that is aging out of the industry faster than it can be replaced.
The supply-demand imbalance has hit crisis territory. Last year alone, nearly 600,000 jobs were posted for major skilled trades positions in the U.S., while only about 150,000 new workers entered the labor pool through apprenticeship programs, according to JLL.
The shortage has caught the attention of some of the country’s most prominent executives, who argue that the U.S. cannot build the infrastructure for AI it’s betting its economic future on without the people to wire, cool, and maintain it.
“I think the intent is there, but there’s nothing to backfill the ambition,” Farley told Axios last fall. “How can we reshore all this stuff if we don’t have people to work there?”
“All the white-collar jobs are going to get automated,” Power said in a recent interview with tech publication Sourcery at the Hill and Valley Forum. “I think we’re going to see massive hyperinflation in blue-collar salaries.” Power added that even with robotic welding on his own factory floor, he still can’t hire enough welders to meet demand from the U.S. Navy.
“Everyone, go tell your kids to quit college and university and go get a welding certification,” Power added. “The country needs you.”
Morgan argues the skilled trades are foundational to nearly every high-growth sector of the economy—a story he says the industry has failed to tell. But one problem is the lingering perception that blue-collar work isn’t as elite or prestigious as white-collar work.
And that’s a perception that needs to change, Morgan said, because, really, skilled tradespeople are the ones who will literally be powering AI’s future.
Morgan also questioned: “Why wouldn’t somebody want to be an HVAC tech or an electrician or refrigeration specialist in the data center industry?”
He added, “You can’t have AI without data centers supporting them.”
As 53% of U.S. commercial building stock was built before 1990, it’s just about time for those structures to be modernized, right as the workforce is running out, according to JLL.
But the jobs necessary to build and power data centers and other commercial spaces aren’t what one would think of as a traditional blue-collar or trades job.
Today’s skilled trades, Morgan said, bear little resemblance to the jobs of a generation ago. The electrician wiring a data center is building the backbone of the AI boom, where a single error can cost millions in downtime. The pipe fitter at a pharmaceutical plant is installing the ultrapure water systems that drugmakers need to make medicine safe.
“It’s about the hidden army behind the buildings that enables us to develop” the next biggest advancements in tech, pharmaceuticals, and more, Morgan said. They’re the “ones enabling AI to accelerate and develop.”
There are signs that attitudes toward skilled trades jobs are changing. The share of teenagers considering vocational or trade school has more than doubled, from 12% in 2018 to 30% in 2024, according to JLL. Community college enrollment has also risen 12% during the past five years, with construction trades, engineering technologies, and mechanical and repair technologies among the fastest-growing majors from 2024 to 2025.
“Maybe…people doing a four-year degree, being saddled with all this debt, [have] now started to realize actually there are different paths to earn a good salary and have a good quality of life without saddling myself with a significant amount of debt,” Morgan said.
But even that surge in interest isn’t enough to close the gap, Morgan said, and the shortage is poised to hit globally, from the U.K. and Australia to Saudi Arabia.
“We’ve got to find different pools of talent that may either be affected in different ways, that we could attract into our industry and fill part of that gap,” he said, pointing to workers in facility management coordinators whose roles are being reshaped by AI.
JLL itself recently piloted a 26-week skilled trades internship within its industrial division, partnering with trade schools across multiple U.S. markets—and 90% of eligible graduates received a full-time offer from the company, Morgan said.
The company’s approach has a three-part “build, grow, retain” strategy: Build talent pipelines through school partnerships, grow capabilities with continuous upskilling on smart-building systems, and retain workers through structured career pathways, performance-based pay, and flexible scheduling.
AI and robotics, Morgan said, will eventually help by automating some of the “dull, dirty, and dangerous” work, though humanoid robots capable of, say, changing a belt in a plant room are still a long way off. And that’s why skilled tradespeople are an absolute necessity.
“It all comes down to perception that we’re actually the enablers of the industries at large, we’re the enablers of the economy,” Morgan said. “Because without buildings, you don’t really necessarily have an economy, and without an economy, then obviously [we’d be] doing something different.
“We have to change the story,” he continued. “This is a really compelling industry to be part of. These roles are foundational to how the world works.”
