The Workplace

[kmaherali]

How Fast Can A.I. Change the Workplace?



Ross Douthat

Opinion Columnist

This week the internet became radicalized about the progress of artificial intelligence by, appropriately enough, an online essay with an assist from A.I. In his viral piece “Something Big Is Happening,” Matt Shumer compared the current A.I. moment to the early days of Covid-19, when people didn’t realize how completely their world was about to change. Except this time, instead of a virus, the agent of transformation is a technology increasingly capable of replacing white-collar workers en masse.

The essay offered a reader-friendly (A.I.-shaped pieces are very reader-friendly!) explanation of what the people driving the development of artificial intelligence have believed for a while. You can hear a similar story from the lips of Dario Amodei, the C.E.O. of Anthropic, in my podcast interview with him this week: On the way to hopefully utopian outcomes — amazing cures, growth beyond our dreams — A.I. may put a lot of people out of work in an incredibly short amount of time. Imagine the effects of automation and outsourcing on blue-collar labor, except inflicted on the professional class and compressed into just a few traumatic years.

People need to understand the part of this argument that’s absolutely correct: It is impossible to look at the A.I. models we have now, to say nothing of what we might get in six months or a year, and say that these technological tools can’t eventually replace a lot of human jobs. The question is whether people inside the A.I. hype loop are right about how fast it could happen, and then whether it will create a fundamental change in human employment rather than just a structural reshuffle.

One obstacle to radical speed is that human society is a complex bottleneck through which even the most efficiency-maxing innovations have to pass. As long as the efficiencies offered by A.I. are mediated by human workers, there will be false starts and misadaptations and blind alleys that make pre-emptive layoffs reckless or unwise.

Even if firings make sense as a pure value proposition, employment in an advanced economy reflects a complex set of contractual, social, legal and bureaucratic relationships, not just a simple productivity-maximizing equation. So many companies might delay any mass replacement for reasons of internal morale or external politics or union rules, and adapt to A.I.’s new capacities through reduced hiring and slow attrition instead.

I suspect the A.I. insiders underestimate the power of these frictions, as they may underestimate how structural hurdles could slow the adoption of any cure or tech that their models might discover. Which would imply a longer adaptation period for companies, polities and humans.

Then, after this adaptation happens, and A.I. agents are deeply integrated into the work force, there are two good reasons to think that most people will still be doing gainful work. The first is the entire history of technological change: Every great innovation has yielded fears of mass unemployment and, every time we’ve found our way to new professions, new demands for human labor that weren’t imaginable before.

The second is the reality that people clearly like a human touch, even in situations where we can already automate it away. The economist Adam Ozimek has a good rundown of examples: Player pianos have not done away with piano players, self-checkout has not eliminated the profession of cashier and millions of waiters remain in service in the United States because an automated restaurant experience seems inhuman.

But here we come to the crucial issue with artificial intelligence: It is less inhuman than any prior technological development; indeed, by its nature, it simulates the human in a way that power looms and steel mills and PowerPoint software never did. So the unanswered question hanging over all these scenarios is how much that imitation shapes its capacity to replace human labor and our willingness to accept that replacement.

It’s easy to assume, in other words, that people will always prefer human waiters and human musicians and a human doctor to give us a medical diagnosis — unless we’re entering a world where people are increasingly habituated to interactions with simulated people, adapt their own humanity to the simulated version and come to prefer the simulation to the messier reality of flesh and blood.

In Silicon Valley, a somewhat socially maladroit realm, most of the discussion about a potential A.I. takeover focuses on the power of digital intelligence to supplant our own. The most important factor may not be raw intelligence, but the social personae through which A.I. is mediated, and (without entering the debate about whether A.I. could be really conscious) how intensely people relate to artificial intelligence agents as though they were conscious beings, just like us.

The more they do, the more profound the implications for labor and employment. And the more profound the implications for larger questions about human power and agency — which we’re more likely to give over, with potentially existential consequences, to an A.I. that we imagine not as a tool but as a friend.

More on the future of A.I. and employment

Opinion
Where Is A.I. Taking Us? Eight Leading Thinkers Share Their Visions. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... urvey.html

Opinion | David Autor, Anton Korinek and Natasha Sarin
What if Labor Becomes Unnecessary? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/opin ... ustry.html
Feb. 4, 2026

Opinion | Brian Groh
When A.I. Took My Job, I Bought a Chain Saw https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/opin ... -jobs.html
Dec. 28, 2025

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/opin ... e9677ea768

[kmaherali]

Your Job May Already Be in Jeopardy

Video: https://vp.nyt.com/video/2026/03/05/163 ... -1080p.mp4

By Michael Steinberger

Mr. Steinberger is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine.

Thomas Greifenberger graduated from the University of Delaware last spring. Although he double-majored in finance and marketing and minored in economics, it took him just three years to earn his bachelor’s degree. He had hoped that his solid grades and demonstrated drive would help him land a position in the financial services industry. But when Mr. Greifenberger began his job search, it quickly became apparent to him that he was sending résumés into a void. He got a few nibbles — several companies invited him to do asynchronous video interviews.

Nothing more came of those opportunities, however, and after a point, he concluded that he was on a futile quest. “It was super discouraging,” he said.

He has returned home to Long Island, where he is now employed by his family’s tree service business. Mr. Greifenberger enjoys the work — he is often the guy up in the bucket, pruning branches — and the tangible results it yields. But he admits that it’s not the future he had envisioned for himself. “I still go on LinkedIn from time to time, but I think that ship has sailed for me,” he said.

Just a few years ago, an entry-level role with a bank or an asset management firm might have been Mr. Greifenberger’s for the asking. But the white-collar job market has cooled dramatically. While the unemployment rate remains relatively low, 4.3 percent, office jobs are suddenly a lot harder to come by, for recent college graduates and experienced professionals alike.

Many companies went on hiring sprees coming out of the pandemic, and the slowdown is perhaps just the inevitable adjustment. But it is happening against the backdrop of the generative A.I. revolution and fears that vast numbers of knowledge workers will soon be evicted from their cubicles and replaced by machines — fears being amplified by an army of online Cassandras. In a sequence of events that called to mind the 1938 Orson Welles radio adaptation of “The War of the Worlds,” famous for convincing panicked listeners that aliens had really invaded, a recent Substack post imagining the economic hellscape that could result from an A.I.-induced white-collar blood bath helped send the Dow Jones industrial average tumbling 800 points. Anxious times.

It is certainly possible that we are in another moment of mass hysteria, even mass hallucination, and that A.I. will not cause permanent widespread joblessness — either because its capabilities will prove to be more limited than observers first thought or because our highly adaptable species will respond to technological change as it always has, by finding new sources of gainful employment. That the people selling the artificial intelligence are among those sounding the most ominous warnings about its potential fallout is notable, however. Some of them are prone to bombastic claims, but it is hard to see how spooking the public serves their interests. It might be wise to take their predictions at face value and assume that A.I. is indeed going to devour a lot of white-collar jobs.

While new ones will hopefully emerge, the transition won’t be painless, and if the cracks we are seeing in the labor market become sinkholes, the effect not just on our economy but also our politics could be profound. If millions of college-educated voters have their lives upended by A.I., they will surely make their fury known. That prospect should be causing alarm in Washington and spurring efforts to try to cushion Americans from the blow that may soon befall them — by giving serious consideration, for instance, to something like universal basic income. But it is an election year, Congress is barely functioning, and on this issue, as with so many others, inertia will very likely prevail.

So are those cracks the first signs of an A.I. jobs apocalypse? It’s too soon to say, but the employment picture has darkened. The economy added only 181,000 jobs in 2025, a shockingly low figure in a year that saw gross domestic product grow by a modest but respectable 2.2 percent. According to Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard University, what we are experiencing now — a sustained period of “slow job growth and gradually rising unemployment without a real recession” — is virtually unprecedented.

Another anomaly: White-collar workers have been disproportionately affected. Blue-collar and service workers are usually hit hardest when the job market turns, while white-collar occupations enjoy a degree of insulation because they are concentrated in “safer, less cyclically sensitive sectors,” says Mr. Katz. Now, however, knowledge workers are the ones struggling.

To be sure, this is not the first time the future of white-collar employment has been called into doubt. In the 2000s, some economists predicted that globalization would eviscerate office work much as it had manufacturing. But while a lot of jobs were sent overseas, others were simply transferred to less expensive parts of the country, and the anticipated white-collar collapse never materialized. It is very possible that the current slowdown is nothing more than a necessary correction after a period of overhiring.

But in a recent Substack post, the economist Gad Levanon of the Burning Glass Institute offered an alternative hypothesis. He noted that hiring has come to a virtual standstill in finance, insurance, accounting, consulting and tech, which are pillars of the “knowledge” economy. Mr. Levanon pointed out that companies in these areas have generally performed well of late while either trimming their head counts or keeping them largely unchanged, which suggested to him that they have found new ways to increase productivity without adding workers. It is unclear if A.I. is contributing to this trend, but the industries he cited all involve functions that seem especially ripe for automation.

This, of course, is the specter haunting millions of Americans who hold white-collar positions. In the not-so-distant past — which is to say, before the debut of ChatGPT in November 2022 — people with desk jobs feared being fired; now, they must also fret about whether the positions they have will even exist a year from now and if the skills they have developed over the course of a career are about to be rendered obsolete. Last year, Microsoft published a study identifying 40 jobs that it said could be most vulnerable to A.I. The list ranged from historians to P.R .specialists to data scientists to — gulp — writers. More recently, the Microsoft A.I. chief executive, Mustafa Suleyman, stated that most professional tasks will be fully automated over the next 12 to 18 months.

It looks all but certain that A.I. will transform knowledge work; the question is to what extent. The optimal outcome, says Harvard’s Mr. Katz, is that A.I. becomes a kind of “co-pilot” that helps people improve their skills and efficiency, and that new types of jobs replace those that are lost. Word that IBM plans to triple the number of entry-level employees it hires this year prompted lots of relieved chatter among office grunts sweating out the A.I. rollout.

The doomsday scenario is that businesses embrace A.I. agents as a substitute for querulous humans. The financial technology company Block announced last month that it was laying off 40 percent of its staff, around 4,000 people, because of the progress it claims to be seeing with A.I. In a social media post, Jack Dorsey, its chief executive, said that “the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company.”

A few former employees have challenged his explanation: They contend that poor management left Block with a bloated payroll and that A.I. is just a convenient excuse for the pink slips. Whatever the truth, investors responded with delight to the news: Block’s stock soared over 20 percent, which is perhaps indicative of where Wall Street comes down on the job augmentation vs. job elimination question.

Some of those being let go may find comparable work. Others, however, could be unemployed for a while — it is a tough market — and as they run short of options and savings, they might have to follow Mr. Greifenberger’s example and consider nonoffice roles. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Sure, when you hear tech oligarchs who haven’t screwed in a lightbulb or fixed a toilet in years extolling the virtues of being an electrician or a plumber, it is hard to suppress a laugh — and hard, too, not to see it as a cynical ploy to persuade Americans to dial back their expectations as A.I. comes for their jobs and more of the nation’s wealth is funneled upward.

But it seems a growing number of white-collar workers are looking at the skilled trades as a potential fallback, and if the rise of A.I. leads to a modest brain drain from the professions into fields such as construction and carpentry, it might also cause us to re-evaluate the prestige that we assign to certain types of labor but not others. It will definitely accelerate the development of so-called “new-collar” jobs, which blur the distinction between white and blue.

I got a glimpse of this trend during a recent visit to a company called Hadrian, a manufacturing start-up that leans heavily on automation and A.I. to produce parts for planes, rockets and satellites. One employee on its factory floor had worked for a commercial real estate brokerage. He traded a white-collar job for a nominally blue-collar one, but in a high-tech setting, and like all of the company’s employees, he is partly compensated with equity — a stake that could be lucrative if and when Hadrian goes public.

Still, that is just one person who made the switch, and there are only so many Hadrians. If A.I. proves to be a job killer and several million people are culled from the white-collar work force, it stands to reason that a significant percentage of them will have trouble maintaining their economic footing. For decades, white-collar jobs have been the main driver of social mobility in the United States. Even now, college-educated workers command an enormous wage premium — more than 70 percent, by most calculations — over those with only high school diplomas.

Many Americans already take a dim view of A.I. and feel as if they are being frog-marched to a future that they neither asked for nor wanted. If A.I. robs some of them of their livelihoods, knocks them out of the middle class and thwarts the aspirations of their kids, wariness will quickly give way to rage.

In a recent interview, Martin Wolf, the chief economics commentator of The Financial Times, suggested that if lots of “skilled, trained thinking activities” are displaced by machines, it could provoke a furious backlash. “We could have a social and political crisis that makes deindustrialization look trivial,” he said. “Deindustrialization, though one of the biggest forces shaping our world, shook the working class, particularly the male working class, from top to bottom. Shaking the prospects of the educated middle class is socially far more dangerous and explosive because it affects them and their parents, who are the people who run our societies in almost every possible way.”

Mr. Wolf is not inclined to hyperbole, and when someone as reliably levelheaded as he is talking this way, it is a good indication that the risk is real. Given the upheaval we may soon be facing, it would be nice if we had a president capable of leading a thoughtful national conversation about where A.I. is taking us. Suffice it to say, Donald Trump is not that kind of president.

Some on Capitol Hill are treating the job threat seriously. Last fall, Senators Mark Warner and Josh Hawley introduced legislation that would require companies to provide information to the Department of Labor about the number of jobs they have cut or created because of A.I. and how they are helping employees navigate the new technology. But the bill would do nothing to ameliorate the circumstances of those who lose their jobs to A.I. On that front, we are apparently just going to hope for the best, not really plan for the worst and trust that creative destruction will somehow see us through it all.

More on artificial intelligence

Opinion | Aaron Zamost
I Worked for Block. Its A.I. Job Cuts Aren’t What They Seem. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/opin ... fs-ai.html
March 4, 2026

Opinion | Ross Douthat
How Fast Can A.I. Change the Workplace? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/14/opin ... yment.html
Feb. 14, 2026

Opinion | David Autor, Anton Korinek and Natasha Sarin
What if Labor Becomes Unnecessary? https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/04/opin ... ustry.html
Feb. 4, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/05/opin ... e9677ea768

[kmaherali]

Why the Kids Won’t Farm



By Brooks Lamb

Mr. Lamb is the author of “Love for the Land: Lessons From Farmers Who Persist in Place” and works for the American Farmland Trust. He wrote from Memphis.

In the next two decades, the owners of roughly 300 million acres of American farm and ranch land are expected to retire or die. How and to whom this land is transferred will determine the future of rural America and our food system.

Much of this land could end up being taken over by the nation’s biggest and wealthiest agricultural operations, which already dominate farming. Other land could be bought up by private investors, many of whom see the acreage as a low-risk asset in their financial portfolios or a future subdivision, strip mall or data center. These entities have purchased thousands of small and midsize farms over the last few decades and are eager to buy more.

The consolidation of agricultural land ownership is harmful for the environment, our health, rural economies and food security. And so it would be better if young people took over the acreage about to change hands and kept small and midsize farms going.

Unfortunately, that’s not happening often enough.

Many people claim that millennials and Gen Z-ers don’t want to farm, that the work is too hard and dirty and that rural lifestyles aren’t appealing. While it’s true that some young people feel this way, the bigger reasons the next generation isn’t flocking to the farm are much more complicated.

For one, young people are often told that farming isn’t a worthwhile profession. Many farm kids are encouraged by educators and even their own parents to leave small towns, where economic opportunities are limited. In America, transience and mobility are rewarded while settling in a rural community is sometimes seen as settling for something less.

Others avoid agriculture because, as children, they watched their farming parents or grandparents struggle. They saw them work multiple jobs to scrape by. They saw prices rise for equipment, feed and seed, and they saw farm incomes stagnate.

Last month, a bipartisan group of agricultural leaders sent a letter to the Senate and House agriculture committees warning that high prices for supplies like fertilizer and machinery, cuts to federal research funding and staffing and market disruptions could contribute to the “widespread collapse” of American agriculture and rural communities.

The impending wave of land transfers mixed with current economic crises have prompted more nonprofit organizations, including the one where I work, to support aging farmers with succession planning. Others are trying to keep agricultural land in the hands of farmers rather than real estate developers. This work is important. But unless it’s coupled with broader structural reforms, rural farming communities will languish. We need to make agriculture more welcoming to the next generation.

Despite the widespread perception to the contrary, there are young people who want to farm.

Some, like me, grew up on farms. We know the discomforts of agricultural life, but we also know its joys. I have rarely felt more purpose and clarity than when I’ve helped my parents haul hay, chop weeds, fix fences or carry a newborn calf to the barn on a freezing night.

Others didn’t grow up in agriculture, yet they feel called to it. Through my work, I’ve met veterans who return from service eager to nurture the soil. I’ve met foodies who understand that the best meals depend on raising the best ingredients. I know urbanites who yearn for hands-on work with the land.

The biggest barrier to entry for next-generation farmers isn’t knowledge or training or work ethic; it’s the historically high price of farmland. Young people need an agricultural economy that makes it easier for them to farm. They need viable, consistent markets for high-quality local products. And, most important, they need affordable land.

I feel this personally. Less than a mile from my parents’ Middle Tennessee farm, 32 acres are up for sale. The land has no house or barn and is listed at more than $34,000 an acre, a figure driven up by local real estate development pressure. My wife and I want a farm of our own, but at prices like these, we can’t afford the land.

Congress can do a lot to ease the land access and affordability crisis as it debates the long overdue farm bill this year. It can increase funds for conservation easements that protect farmland from development, expand low-interest government loans and create new down payment assistance programs, all to help make land easier to buy for prospective farmers. The federal government should also create an Office of Small Farms within the Department of Agriculture, especially since many young people want to, and can only afford to, farm at this scale.

State leaders could pursue their own policies, such as offering tax credits for new farmers and grants to help offset the cost of farm infrastructure and equipment, which have bipartisan support. Nonprofits can also help by providing technical assistance, connecting people who own land with young farmers looking to lease or buy it and establishing locally focused cooperative farming models, which can help with marketing and processing.

The next time you’re in a grocery store, think about the food you’re buying — and who you want to grow or raise it. When you pass through a rural community, fields and pastures all around, think about that land and who will tend it years from now.

Farming isn’t easy, but some of us want to do it. Here’s hoping we get a chance.

More on the food system

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March 7, 2026

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July 12, 2025

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[kmaherali]

In Search of Career Prospects, Young New Yorkers Turn to Construction

Facing a bleak job market and fears around artificial intelligence, young workers are lining up for a shot to develop skills and secure jobs in the trades.


Tyshae Shields, 24, is a first-year commercial painting apprentice at the Finishing Trades Institute of New York. “It’s a very straining job,” she said, but added that community college had overwhelmed her.Credit...Karsten Moran for The New York Times

By Emily LangPhotographs by Karsten Moran

Reporting from New York City. Emily Lang spoke with dozens of hopeful and current construction apprentices, and attended a training for commercial painters and glaziers.

April 8, 2026
On a recent evening in Queens, Eddy Alvarez realized he needed to change his plans.

He was scouting out the office of the insulators union where he and two friends planned to pick up applications the next morning for an apprenticeship, a yearslong program that provides mentorship and hands-on construction training. Fifteen hours before the 8 a.m. call time, a line was already forming.

Mr. Alvarez, 25, said he called his friends, co-workers at a T-Mobile store in Queens, and told them to come to the building. By 5:30 p.m., they were in line with a tent — a smart decision since by morning, it was drizzling.

ImageA group wearing hard hats gathers around a piece of construction equipment.

Glazier apprentices at the institute earlier this month. Those who land a union apprenticeship begin their careers with years of training.

In recent weeks, lines like these, often filled with young people who are eager for careers in construction, have been snaking around union offices. Citing poor job prospects, the costs of college and fears that artificial intelligence may soon take over their jobs, dozens of hopeful and current apprentices said that a job in the trades seemed like the best route for their futures.

“That’s one of the things that’s more attractive to me to do this, because it’s some kind of job that, for the moment, A.I. can’t do,” John Pallares, 29, said of construction work, while in line with Mr. Alvarez. He was concerned that their sales jobs at T-Mobile would become obsolete within only a few years.

About an hour after the application distribution began, a coordinator signaled to those still in line that they should head home. The union was already out of its 100 applications, for about 15 spots. Last year there were available applications for days, according to one coordinator. For Mr. Alvarez and his friends, the night camping in line paid off. They secured applications and will begin preliminary assessments later this month.

Image
Five people sit at long tables in front of an instructor who stands before them.

Juan Bernal has been instructing apprentices for more than two decades. He said he had gotten less tough on his students over the years.

The surge in interest appears to be happening nationwide, according to a director with the North America’s Building Trades Unions. In New York, the local iron workers union has seen a 20 percent increase in the number applicants over the past two years, according to the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York, an organization of union affiliates. Finishing trades saw a 50 percent increase from 2023 to 2024.

Image
A man wearing a hard hat in profile.

Fernely Morales, an apprentice.

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A person poses wearing a T-shirt that says "A woman's place is in her union."

Chanel Rivera instructs apprentices in commercial painting at the institute.

Interest is noticeably trending among younger generations, spreading through social media in addition to the word-of-mouth pipeline that traditionally led workers to unions. Many people in line in recent weeks learned about the opportunities through accounts like Workers Club NYC, which broadcasts when apprenticeship applications will be distributed. Five years ago, applicants for some trades were commonly in their 30s, according to a spokeswoman for the broader trades council — now they’re in their 20s, with a “noticeable group coming right out of high school.”

“What happened? Why are all these people really interested in joining this union?” said James Hayes, the director of the carpenters training center in New York City, which holds monthly information sessions for potential trainees.

Image
Two people examine a wall, while on the other side of the wall, another two people stand in a room with a drop cloth.

Left, Rony Luna, an instructor, works with Ms. Shields. Right, Omar Robinson, an instructor, works with Jeffrey Astacio, an apprentice who said he had already taken pride in helping build New York’s skyline.

Many of the young people interested in construction programs said they wanted to apply because of the current job market, which nationally is the bleakest it’s been in years for young graduates, as hiring has slowed and entry-level jobs are harder to come by. In New York City, according to the Center for an Urban Future, the number of entry-level job postings fell 37 percent from 2022 to 2024.

“Young New Yorkers are having an increasingly difficult time entering the work force,” said Mark Levine, the city’s comptroller, “a trend that should be raising alarm bells for anyone watching our economy.”

Michael Figueroa, an 18-year-old who got an application for the insulators apprenticeship after waiting in line overnight, said he had struggled to find work. “Most of the jobs I’ve applied to have been retail jobs, but most of them I can’t get,” he said. “I feel comfortable with my résumé, but it just hasn’t worked out.”

Adding to the distress many young people feel is A.I.’s encroachment into a variety of fields. A recent poll by Harvard University found that a majority of young Americans believe A.I. threatens their professional prospects, though economists are uncertain how it will disrupt the market. A report from Stanford University found “substantial declines” in employment among young workers in jobs that are most exposed to A.I., like computer programming and customer service.

Image
Through an archway that is cut into a wall, a man speaks to two people in front of a wall that is partly painted. Paint and other construction tools are nearby.

Interest in trade work is noticeably trending among younger generations, spreading through social media accounts like Workers Club NYC, which broadcasts when apprenticeship applications will be distributed.

Manual fields like construction and maintenance, however, aren’t as vulnerable, according to several economic studies. The pay is also attractive to many young workers. Union apprentices earn a competitive hourly rate and benefits; potential salaries for some program graduates can start around $100,000, according to various union leaders.

“I need something that I know is not going to have, like, a robot taking over in a few years,” said Makayla Otero, 20, who is in a masonry training program. She described herself as a visual learner, and said she grew up watching her grandfather and uncle work in construction. “If something’s messed up, I know what’s wrong with that,” she said, “and I can fix it myself.”

For those who land a union apprenticeship, their careers begin with yearslong training. At a recent session at the Finishing Trades Institute of New York in Queens, a sprawling center with classrooms and a warehouse, first-year apprentices learned how to delicately paste wallpaper for a fake hotel room. Later that day, other students secured themselves to a mock bridge to practice suspending above waterways.

Image
A woman poses for a portrait next to a wall smoother over with plaster. She holds tools and painting supplies are behind her.

Ms. Shields, a first-year apprentice.

As one commercial painting apprentice, Tyshae Shields, 24, slowly smoothed plaster, she said that community college had overwhelmed her. When she secured an apprenticeship through a job-readiness program, Ms. Shields, an artist, said she felt like she found a career that would also help her creative ambitions. She noted that along with the health and pet insurance, a benefit of the job was meeting her boyfriend, a third-year apprentice. But she’s had to get used to the physical demands.

“It’s a very straining job,” said Ms. Shields, who said she sometimes complained about it to her friends.

For parents, it may be difficult to watch their children turn to such a physically demanding career, said Melissa Shetler, an education associate at Cornell’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations.

“You worked to get your kid to go to college, to kind of win the ‘great American dream,’ and there was this upward mobility promise with that,” said Ms. Shetler. “But I think this generation, they’re sort of seeing that’s not necessarily what it is. And they’re finding a lot of pride and solidarity in this different type of work.”

Image
A man poses for a portrait in a room with paint buckets. He holds tools and wears a sweatshirt that says “DC9.”

Mr. Robinson teaches commercial painting at the institute, and tries to joke with his students while caulk is drying.

One instructor at the Finishing Trades Institute of New York, Omar Robinson, who’s been teaching for more than two decades, finds that this generation of apprentices needs a lot more reassurance.

“I grew up with the philosophy that if you’re doing something and I don’t say anything, that means you’re good,” said Mr. Robinson, who tries to joke with students while caulk is drying. Now, he said, “I got to tell them, ‘Good job,’ you know? ‘Keep going like that.’”

Union apprenticeships aren’t the only skilled trade programs that have seen an uptick in interest. The number of applications for the city’s youth train-and-earn program, which offers six training programs in the construction trades, increased by 30 percent over last year. Nonprofits in the city, like St. Nicks Alliance, which focuses on affordable housing and work force development, also reported high demands of interest. For an electrical training class earlier this year, over 250 people showed up for a class with 18 spots, according to a director with the group.

The reported surge in interest might be arriving at the right time.

Image
A man wearing a hard hat operates machinery as another man stands behind him.

Jobs in manual fields like construction and maintenance aren’t as vulnerable to artificial intelligence, experts say.

Image
Through a window, a man is seen painting a ceiling with a rolling brush.

Once apprentices complete their programs, they’ll have more than just a secure job, instructors say. They’ll also have a new way of seeing the city.

“There is so much work coming,” said Gary LaBarbera, the president of the trades council, adding, “I think people are recognizing there is going to be enormous opportunity here.”

While it’s unclear how many union construction jobs the Mamdani administration will secure, the Adams administration announced last year that $7 billion in projects will fall under union labor agreements. To supply the anticipated union labor, the city hoped to see 30,000 additional apprenticeships created by 2030.

Once apprentices complete their programs, they’ll have more than just a secure job, instructors say. They’ll also have a new way of seeing the city.

“That’s one of the highlights of my conversation with these young people, is that if you succeed, you’ll have a special pride in building the skylines of New York City,” said Larry Hughes, an 82-year old instructor who’s been in the cement and concrete union for over 63 years. He said his daughter used to point out the buildings he’s worked on when she went on dates.

At the recent painting workshop, Jeffrey Astacio, 26, was learning how to prime a wall as he described how he’s already claiming pieces of the skyline. On a bike ride with friends, he pointed out a hotel he was working on.

“You see that building right there?” Mr. Astacio recalled telling them. “That was me.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/real ... e9677ea768