There’s angst in the air on college campuses and in offices across the country. Successive warnings on AI’s looming threat to automate swaths of entry-level white-collar work have put workers in a precarious position. And several large-scale layoffs this year have brought home the reality of those warnings.
But not everyone is buying into the doom-and-gloom about the labor market, particularly in the white-collar world. Carrie Charles is the CEO of staffing and recruiting firm Broadstaff, which works with Fortune 500 companies like Verizon and Oracle. She said her company has seen a surge in demand for skilled electricians and technicians as part of the AI infrastructure build-out. These are jobs that combine elements of the corporate world with the hands-on day-to-day of a trade role: viable roles for which laid-off tech workers can make a career pivot, according to Charles.
