"Learn to code" they said

Every week, some think tank releases a terrifying report. They claim artificial intelligence is coming for millions of white-collar jobs. Analysts point to large language models writing legal briefs, analyzing financial data, and generating marketing copy. The prevailing consensus suggests knowledge workers are facing an impending mass extinction.

Before I go on, let's question the reality of this claim. Most bosses can barely describe what their employees do. A vast number of white-collar jobs are highly abstract. They involve navigating ambiguous corporate politics, interpreting vague instructions from management, and managing unpredictable human relationships. Automation at scale requires rigid standardization.

Look at the corporate track record: many companies have spent years trying to automate simple clerical tasks with little success. Most internal corporate processes remain incredibly cumbersome. Employees are permanently tied to antiquated legacy software and disparate information silos. A company currently struggling to sync its legacy billing software with its customer database is highly unlikely to replace its entire operations department with AI anytime soon.

But for argument's sake, let’s presume the dire predictions are at least partially correct. Let's assume a significant portion of white-collar jobs will inevitably disappear over the next decade.

What are people telling their kids to get into? The easy, default answer is the skilled trades.

The trades are highly valuable. They serve as a vital personal skill and a critical function within society. Electricians, plumbers, and mechanics literally and figuratively keep the trains running. True trades are unplugged. They operate entirely in the physical world and will likely be the absolute last category of work replaced by artificial intelligence.

However, the trades are still a component of the broader labor market. They are governed by the fundamental laws of supply and demand.

An influx of desperate workers flooding into the skilled trades will inflate the labor supply. This massive oversupply of labor will cap wages. A saturated job market allows employers to easily erode worker rights. Companies can bypass workplace safety protocols when there is an endless line of desperate people waiting to take a complainer's job.

At the exact same time, the overall demand for skilled trades could decline. Unemployed or underemployed white-collar workers will experience drastically reduced disposable incomes. They will immediately forego discretionary spending on home renovations, additions, and new housing construction.

The corporate side faces a similar contraction. Companies operating with smaller, AI-driven workforces will require significantly less office space. This shift will severely pressure the commercial real estate market, reducing the available capital for building new facilities or maintaining existing commercial properties.

Furthermore, lower income tax revenues from a diminished middle class might pressure government budgets, leading to cuts in public infrastructure spending.

You can see exactly how this cycle ends. We witnessed a similar phenomenon in the software development world. For the last decade, the universal answer to economic instability was "learn to code." People learned, the labor pool expanded, and today basic coding is heavily commoditized, oversaturated, and increasingly obsolete.

Learn a trade as a survival skill. Learn it to be genuinely useful in your community and to possess tangible, real-world abilities. However, you must manage your expectations of the outcome. If the prognostications are accurate, the aggregate labour supply is about to increase massively. The trades do not offer immunity from the harsh realities of mass unemployment.

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Thank you.

Sarah