#183 - America Needs Builders

For the last 50 years, America traded its hands for its head. We told our kids to go to college, sit in offices, and work with ideas instead of things. Our parents said, "Don't do what I did" - generations who used to swing hammers, fix machines, or pour concrete. The result is that today, we live in a country where fewer people know how to build the physical world we live in.

This was fine—for a while. But now, the cracks are showing.

We’re at a crossroads, and two forces are making that painfully clear.

The first is China. China didn’t just copy our factories—they became the world’s factory. In the time it took us to debate whether kids should learn to code or major in marketing, China trained millions of engineers and technicians to build everything from power plants to microchips. The Chinese didn’t make a false tradeoff between thinking and doing. They build, at scale, and fast. Meanwhile, American manufacturing employment dropped from nearly 19.5 million in 1979 to 12.6 million in 2024.

And why is this? Because collectively, we as a nation decided to “do what we do best” at home by doing the intellectual work at home, and outsource our manufacturing and building capabilities to cheaper labor abroad. This worked… for a while.

The second is AI. While we’ve overproduced white-collar workers and underproduced skilled tradespeople, AI is now coming for the white-collar jobs. Writing marketing copy, reviewing legal contracts, generating code—AI can do these tasks at lightning speed. Jobs that require moving electrons are easier for machines to learn than jobs that move atoms. No LLM can fix your toilet. No robot can rewire a house or weld a pipeline in the field. It can certainly design one, but it can’t run a bead.

Yet we’ve spent decades devaluing those who can. Those who build.

The numbers are stark. In 2024, Associated Builders and Contractors estimated that the construction industry would need over 500,000 more workers than the normal pace of hiring just to meet demand. The average age of a U.S. construction worker is now over 42, and nearly 25% are over 55.

Plumbers? We’ll be short by 550,000 of them by 2027. That shortage alone could cost the economy $33 billion in unmet demand. In manufacturing, Deloitte reports that up to 1.9 million jobs could go unfilled in the next decade due to lack of skilled labor. Not a lack of jobs—a lack of people who know how to do them.

Meanwhile, we’ve built a debt-financed college industrial complex. The U.S. spent decades pushing kids into four-year degrees. Nearly 40% of those who enroll in college never finish. Many who do are underemployed and drowning in debt. Meanwhile, the average salary for a plumber, electrician, or HVAC tech is about $60,000–$80,000 depending on experience—often with no debt and no need to wait until 22 to start earning - and successful, licensed blue collar business owners earn over six figures per year.

We’ve trained a generation to push paper while neglecting those who pour foundations.

So what do we do?

First, we need to rebuild the pipeline. That means shop class in high school. It means treating trade school as a first-rate option, not a fallback. It means giving teenagers the option to apprentice with local electricians, welders, and manufacturing plants, not just sending them to career fairs for law or business. We have enough lawyers and managers.

Second, we need to pay. Money talks. The market is already moving in this direction: as demand rises, trades wages are climbing. But governments and industries can sweeten the pot—signing bonuses, tuition reimbursement, tool stipends. If we can subsidize student loans for 4 year liberal arts degrees, we can do the same for welders, linemen, and advanced manufacturing career tracks.

Third, we need to run the playbook from countries that still remember how to build. Germany and Switzerland have vocational programs that channel over 60% of high schoolers into apprenticeships. Their youth unemployment rates are half of ours. Their middle class isn’t vanishing—it’s building things.

Fourth, we need to stop pretending this is about brains vs. brawn. Building is thinking. A master plumber does as much or more math than a marketing exec. A welder on a wind farm knows more physics than most MBA grads. The best builders are thinkers. They just don’t sit behind desks.

And fifth, we need to teach our kids—and ourselves—that dignity doesn’t come from a job title. It comes from usefulness. From making things that work. From fixing what’s broken. From building.

The coming decades will reward those who can ideate, design, and ultimately build. AI is coming for the digital and intellectual world. Geopolitics is forcing us to make things at home again. We’ll need people who can wire a plant, pour concrete, install panels, run cables, design and build machines. We need people who can not only design things —but who can also build them.

America was a nation of builders once. We can a nation of builders again. But it starts with choosing hands and heads—not just one or the other.

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