Artificial intelligence is expected to reshape the labor market by eliminating white-collar positions that do not require a lot of creativity or experience, but at the same time increase demand for blue-collar employees like construction workers, electricians, or plumbers, as AI infrastructure requires a massive built-out, according to Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia. That build-out spans many industries, so while some roles will vanish, others will flourish, reports Bloomberg.
"This is the largest infrastructure buildout in human history that is going to create a lot of jobs," Huang said in a conversation with Laurence D. Fink, the head of BlackRock, at the World Economic Forum 2026. "We are going to have plumbers, electricians, construction and steel workers, network technicians, and people who install and fit out the equipment. In the United States we are seeing quite a significant boom in [these areas]: salaries have gone up, nearly doubled. We are talking about six-figure salaries for people who are building uh chip factories or computer factories or AI factories. We have a great shortage in that."
However, the benefits of AI-driven growth are unevenly distributed across the labor market. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei once warned that AI-enabled automation could trigger a 'white-collar bloodbath,' which could eliminate up to 50% of entry-level office jobs. He noted that Anthropic's Claude AI has become particularly great at coding tasks, which could displace junior software developers and even erode portions of more senior software engineering work.
Still, even Amodei believes the long-term gains from AI will outweigh the damage. Nonetheless, he warns that large-scale unemployment or underemployment remains a serious risk over the next five years.
By contrast, Huang argues that some professions that can greatly benefit from both AI and human touch will actually increase demand for certain specialists, which will lift certain industries to new heights.
"Ten years ago, one of the first professions that everybody thought was going to get wiped out was radiology," Huang noted. "The reason for that was that the first thing AI [gpy] superhuman in capability was computer vision, and one of the largest applications of computer vision is studying scans by radiologists. Well, 10 years later, it is true that AI has now completely permeated and diffused into every aspect of radiology. It is true that radiologists use AI to study scans. […] However, […] the number of radiologists have gone up. Is that because a lack of trust of or is that because the human interaction with the results of AI is a better outcome? […] The fact that they are able to study scans now infinitely fast allows them to spend more time with patients diagnosing their disease, interacting with the patients, interacting with other clinicians. […] As a result of that, the number of patients that the hospital can see has gone up, [driving revenues of hospitals]."
In short, while AI can be a disaster for certain industries and professions, its impact on the quality of life will likely be comparable to the impact of electricity, automobiles, computers, broadband Internet, and telecommunications, all of which created many more professions and employment opportunities than they eliminated. However, one should note that the impact of AI can be compared to the cumulative impact of the aforementioned technologies combined in a very short time, so making exact predictions here is hardly a good business.
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