Green Building Advisor: How AI will change your job

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Artificial Intelligence Isn’t Coming for Your Job, but It Will Change It Forever

A breakdown of recent jobs data and AI markets shows a bright future for skilled trade work, with caveats.

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The number of professions contending with the rapid ascent of artificial intelligence seems to grow daily. Many on the list are unsurprising: data scientists, computer programmers, customer service representatives, technical writers, accountants, and a bevy of other white-collar jobs in the design, business, financial, and applied sciences fields. People in these roles are facing some degree of obsolescence, and with no federal policies in place to regulate AI’s role in job markets, its impacts on workers’ rights, or its (sometimes obvious) infringement on copyright laws, the future does indeed seem grim for large subsets of the working class.

One subset of workers not at immediate risk of being replaced by generative and agentic AI tools are those that work with their hands or otherwise perform hands-on tasks that no robot could duplicate. Think nurses, paramedics, childcare workers, cooks, and firefighters. But among the top of that list are the various trades that comprise the home-building and construction sectors: electricians, plumbers, roofers, HVAC techs, carpenters, and general contractors.

Much reporting of late has emphasized how the AI boom is actually “changing skilled trades for the better” and creating increased demand for skilled trade talent. The bigger picture, however, is less clear.

Demand vs. Availability

Despite an increased demand for jobs across the manufacturing and construction sectors, corresponding data indicates those industries have seen net losses, with the nonresidential construction industry losing 11,000 jobs on net last February, and most blue-collar sectors taking net losses at rates not seen since the pandemic or earlier. The biggest shift in 2025 “has been the rapid decline in construction sector job growth, which has only added 52,000 jobs over the last twelve months, compared to 191,000 the twelve months prior,” wrote economist Joseph Politano last January. “Residential contractors … have seen by far the most dramatic shift, losing nearly 55,000 jobs over the last year alone.”

While growth may have stagnated, owing to tariffs, a manufacturing slowdown, the high price of goods, and other factors, a recent report from Randstad, an HR services company, reveals that demand for certain skilled trades has surged in the last few years, with construction workers up 30%, HVAC engineers up 67%, and robotics technicians up 107%. This growth is almost solely attributed to the growth of data center construction, which requires vast workforces across the spectrum of skilled, hands-on, and digital-first workers.

“The AI data center build-out is providing strong, but spotty, opportunities for workers in the trades,” according to recent reporting in the Times, suggesting that such infrastructure growth won’t provide stability for workers because once the buildings are finished, their operations and maintenance require minimal staffing.

Training to become digital natives

As more white-collar work phases down along with AI’s continued rise, a lot of companies will face some hard decisions. The choice is seemingly simple: employ humans or machines. But that framework is simplistic and willfully ignores AI’s role in transforming one business to the next. It also disregards the reality that, even in cases where generative and agentic tools can perform tasks once done by humans, this requires capable humans to do the work of training and managing said tools, and in many cases proofing whatever data they generate. In other words, the rumors of AI coming to replace white-collar labor are premature.

A recent GBA Q&A on the topic of AI’s ability to tackle design and building plans revealed some thoughtful insights. One expert member commented that he found “the more obscure the technical details … the more likely AI is to give you a very wrong answer … AI answers range from reasonably OK to so bad that they will cause your structure to fail over time.”

Another expert member noted that a home’s design “combines very sensitive psychological factors as well as highly technical factors. A wide range of disciplines and skill sets are involved.” He further notes that, given how sophisticated some tools have become in a very short time, “prompting AI carefully could probably generate some worthwhile plans. But it would depend on the skills of the prompter.”

Therein lies what many believe is the heart of this debate: how to onboard more people in the AI revolution. The solutions vary. For some, the answer is to “upskill” existing tradespeople through new certifications, trainings, and apprenticeships, so that many workers, white- and blue-collar alike, may continue functioning in their current roles but with more advanced benchmarks and timelines. Another possibility gaining traction is to encourage white-collar workers to pursue a skilled trade in the construction or healthcare fields.

Using AI in the home trades

Of course, training desk jockeys to become roofers or drywall installers or HVAC technicians isn’t a feasible solution on a large scale. Nor is the increased demand for skilled trades as the result of a massive data center build-out a long-term solution. That’s like pointing out that Chinese immigrants enjoyed record employment in the 1860s thanks to the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad and trying to paint it as some macroeconomic trend rather than an isolated moment in history.

While it’s true that skilled trades cannot be so easily displaced by AI as white-collar work, we should see this increase in demand for hands-on labor as an opportunity learn what AI can do for skilled trade work. In a recent interview with Forbes, Jim Pauley, CEO of the National Fire Protection Association, remarked, “Today’s construction processes, materials, and systems are infused with technology. So-called ‘smart homes’ don’t get built by themselves. People in the skilled trades not only have to be great at their craft but informed users of tech tools as well.” In his earnest attempt to dispel the myth that skilled trade work is inherently low-tech work, Pauley inadvertently alludes to where AI’s greatest impact may be felt.

Automated pre-fab design and construction is certainly one area where AI tools are being employed. The same goes for 3D-printed homes, the ready-mix concreteindustry, and subsets of the forestry sector, to name a few. And if HVAC techs think they’ll still be getting away with applying rule of thumb for load calculations five years from now, they may well end up being replaced by AI, in a manner of speaking, and becoming the exception that proves the rule.

In each case, the rise of AI doesn’t provide blanket job security for skilled tradespeople on its own. But it is something of an insurance policy that an increasing number of white-collar laborers don’t qualify for. According to Pauley, AI can enhance job security among the skilled trades, but only for those professionals who manage to integrate it into their work. He says, “What AI can do is help tradespeople focus on what really matters: their trade.”