Salena Zito

Mike Rowe has been on a lonely mission. For two decades, he has been raising the alarm.

Rowe has been warning anyone who would listen that our skills gap in the trades was widening to a chasm so large that the economic effect on U.S. manufacturing companies, in particular auto and steel industries but also defense, construction and energy sectors, was going to be nothing short of catastrophic.

Few listened. Rowe appeared before Congress. Twice. He sent an open letter to then-President Barack Obama. Crickets. Nonetheless, Rowe persisted. His alarm bells were not hyperbole. In fact, the gap has continued to widen. Last week, the Tech Times reported that the construction sector alone needs 349,000 net new workers just to keep pace with demand in 2026.

In April, the property services firm JLL issued a report showing that by 2030, 2.1 million skilled trades positions for electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, welders, pipe fitters and equipment operators were at a high risk of going unfilled. These are the key jobs needed to build homes, offices, buildings, energy infrastructure and artificial intelligence data power centers.

Some raw facts from the American Builders and Contractors Association are even more chilling: 39% of electricians in this country were 45 years old or older. Another disturbing stat: For every five plumbers leaving the workforce, only two apprentices are entering. As baby boomers age out, the industry faces an estimated shortage of up to 550,000 plumbers, according to the Merrow Report.

Same with auto mechanics. Currently, the United States is facing a shortage of 600,000 auto mechanics, according to that same report.

All these shortages are creating a downward and slippery slope for both consumers and builders alike, including higher costs and growing safety risks. And it creates wait times for services that extend beyond days into weeks, months and even years for larger projects.

Dina Powell McCormick, president of Meta, said that she first saw the impact of this escalating problem when she joined her husband, Sen. David McCormick, a Pittsburgh Republican, when he was running for office in 2022 and 2024.

Both listened to the growing concerns of small, medium and large business owners of manufacturing facilities and their worries over the expanding skills trade gap.

Last year, Rowe spoke at the Energy Innovation Summit in Pittsburgh, the first of its kind in bringing leaders and workers in the trades together with the intellectual capital at Carnegie Mellon University, along with the industries that need them both for energy and AI data power centers. Rowe bluntly addressed the problem in a panel. McCormick was listening, and it was then that she knew she wanted to help bridge that gap.

The problem, Rowe warned a somewhat stunned audience, wasn’t just in traditional manufacturing. All the tech companies that were clamoring to build infrastructure for AI were running into the same challenge. They couldn’t find “skilled workers to not just build the data power centers needed to power the future but also (to) keep them humming,” Rowe said.

But it wasn’t until she became president of Meta earlier this year that McCormick’s ability to “do something” could finally be realized. Last week, McCormick and Rowe, as CEO of mikeroweWORKS Foundation, announced America’s Workforce Academy. The new effort is a training initiative aimed at connecting workers with skilled trade careers tied to data center and infrastructure development.

In a dual interview with the Washington Examiner, McCormick said that it’s an honor to partner with Rowe. “He is the greatest evangelist for the American worker, and he has been for 18 years,” she said of his decadeslong efforts to inspire people to get into the trades. Rowe’s foundation runs a scholarship program trying to fill the gap between the massive demand for plumbers, electricians, welders and fiber technicians, and the growing shortage.

“What Meta is launching today is America’s Workforce Academy,” she said, “a program that within five weeks gives you paid training, a credential that you have for life, and a guaranteed job on a Meta job site or anywhere else you want to take that credential.”