America's 'silent army' of skilled tradespeople are retiring with no one to replace them—and the price tag could hit $1 trillion a year

An engineer takes a reading in a control room (Credit: Getty Images)

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.

By 2030, an estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs in the U.S. could go unfilled, with potential economic losses reaching $1 trillion annually, according to U.S. Department of Education estimates cited in a new report from JLL shared exclusively with Fortune.