Earlier this year, one of the largest asset managers in the world did something a financial institution should never have to do. It started training electricians. BlackRock committed $100 million to move 50,000 Americans into the skilled trades.
Its chief executive, Larry Fink, was blunt about why. The country needs an estimated $10 trillion in infrastructure investment by 2033, he said, and capital is no longer what’s in short supply.
The U.S. is racing to build data centers, a more resilient power grid, semiconductor plants, the physical scaffolding of the age of Artificial Intelligence. It does not lack money or technology. What it lacks is people who know how to build it.
Construction needs hundreds of thousands of additional skilled workers a year just to keep pace. Manufacturers project that nearly two million jobs could go unfilled if current trends continue. And the infrastructure build-out is already short the electricians, HVAC technicians, and high-voltage specialists who are needed to do the work.
These shortages cannot be resolved overnight. They are the result of decades spent treating workforce development as something that begins only after young people leave school.
Part of what went wrong was a false choice. America began to treat all young people as if they faced a single fork in the road. They could choose the office or the job site. A working economy has never run on one to the exclusion of the other. The workforce needs white-collar and blue-collar workers and, increasingly, employees who are in between, so-called purple-collar workers who do the technical jobs that keep data centers, power grids, and chip plants running.
What those paths share is a common foundation: the capability to solve problems, apply knowledge, and keep learning as work changes.
College still matters for more young people, not fewer. But college was never meant to be the only door to the work world. Preparing young people for multiple paths widens the future in front of them.
Education has long been thought of as a ladder for individuals. But rarely has it been seen as strategic national infrastructure. Yet that is how earlier generations approached it. The industries that built this country depended on a pipeline that ran from the classroom to work. But somewhere along the way, K-12 narrowed into an on-ramp to college. As it did, the pipeline into the trades like those that wired cities and built bridges eroded.
A correction is underway led so far by markets rather than government policy. BlackRock’s commitment is one example. Another example is chipmakers standing up their own apprenticeships. Many new semiconductor jobs do not require a four-year college degree. Workers who finish apprenticeships out-earn the average associate’s-degree holder, often debt-free.
Training is only half the answer. Fewer than half of those who begin a registered apprenticeship finish. The reasons are many and poorly tracked. But, generally, too many young people complete their programs without the needed skills, including the ability to read and comprehend, apply mathematics, and solve problems.
For everyone working to strengthen the skilled-trades pipeline, expanding training will matter only to the extent that it also strengthens the capabilities students bring with them. So, the U.S. has to build capability on two timelines at once: accelerate for the ones at the door now and rebuild for everyone who follows.
Fortunately, companies like BlackRock are leading the way. Others should do the same. That means aligning the policies that shape K12 – academic standards, accountability, career pathways, and workforce investments – around developing the capabilities every pathway demands.
The question before us is not how to fill jobs. It is whether the U.S. will finally make the development of human capability a national responsibility and build the education system as if the country's future depends on it.
It does.
Tequilla Brownie, Ed.D, is the Chief Executive Officer of TNTP, a nonprofit focused on ensuring schools have access to effective teachers.
