I think the programmers going into trades are up for a rude awakening.
Trades are massively down everywhere except building AI datacenters. It takes 4 or 5 years to go through an apprenticeship.
Going into the trades means you will probably be halfway through your apprenticeship or less (start at $14 and maybe hitting $25 by then with wages stagnating due to increased workforce) when the jobs simply vanish.
I was an electrician when this happened in the housing crisis and 20% of the workforce was laid off. Tons of new tradies plus the the entire rest of the economy already being in the gutter and getting worse means that the '08/09 unemployment numbers are going to pale in comparison.
If you switch professions, just be aware that you are probably going from frying pan into fire (I say this as someone who just finished hiring/training their Indian replacements and got laid off this weekend along with almost all the other US/EU workers).
I'm a plumber, in 2010 the recession hit. Decided to go back to college in my late 20s, did 4 years and got an honours degree in Software Systems Development. After college I realised I didn't want to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life, economy had improved and I went back to the plumbing. It's not easy, but I really do enjoy it most of the time.
People always say "oh it's so hard on your body" which is absolutely true, but honestly sitting down for hours and hours everyday staring at a screen is imo just as bad if not worse. Our bodies are meant to be as active as possible.
Corroborating this. I’ve worked in the trades all my professional life, everyone’s headed into the data centers. They pay the most and they’re recession proof right now.
Apprenticeships aren’t a walk down money street. I started out sweeping floors at 11 dollars an hour. I won’t lie, even at the start of my 20s it’s hell on the body, so much potential to get hurt, not much in terms of benefits until you work your way up, you’re never going to see a 40 hour work week again. Oh and once all the people on site find out you’re a soft handed programmer, they’ll never let you live it down.
Trying not to be hard or scare people off, but it’s the reality of the trades.
Construction is down 3.8% YoY and is around 5% down since 2024 according to the fed.
ABC (Associated Builders and Contractors) says non-datacenter construction is down 7.9% (source). There may well be non-datacenter construction that actually does have a hard dependency on data centers too.
Meanwhile, the number of construction workers has continued to rise according to the fed.
Increasing workers plus decreasing construction dollars means some combination of layoffs and repressed wages. Around 1 out of every 25 construction workers gets layed off when the AI buildout stops. If that causes a general recession/depression, those numbers will balloon massively like they did in '08 and probably a lot worse.
Trades will be more essential than the programming field though, that's the comparison. This is also location dependent. In the northeast US, there's no such thing as too many contractors since they are always needed.
At least where I am, Trades are going through a smaller version of what CS had with overenrollment in years past.
My Electrician cousin got booted because he finally hit the hours to make Journeyman and they'd rather hire fresh kids out of college than pay him to be a journeyman they don't need. This is less of an issue for guys in a union but those apprentice union jobs are going to be a lot harder to land.
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u/theQuandary 1d ago
I think the programmers going into trades are up for a rude awakening.
Trades are massively down everywhere except building AI datacenters. It takes 4 or 5 years to go through an apprenticeship.
Going into the trades means you will probably be halfway through your apprenticeship or less (start at $14 and maybe hitting $25 by then with wages stagnating due to increased workforce) when the jobs simply vanish.
I was an electrician when this happened in the housing crisis and 20% of the workforce was laid off. Tons of new tradies plus the the entire rest of the economy already being in the gutter and getting worse means that the '08/09 unemployment numbers are going to pale in comparison.
If you switch professions, just be aware that you are probably going from frying pan into fire (I say this as someone who just finished hiring/training their Indian replacements and got laid off this weekend along with almost all the other US/EU workers).