AI is eating jobs at a startling rate.

During the Aspen Ideas Festival in July, Ford CEO Jim Farley predicted that artificial intelligence will cut in half the number of white-collar jobs in the U.S., becoming the latest boss to sound the alarm about AI’s impact on workers. Previously, Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos, who already employs about a million robots in the company’s global logistics workforce, said the corporate workforce will absolutely shrink as a result of AI.

The old success model might already be on life support.

The model that many of us believed to be the path to success may be gone in just a few years. We were told to finish high school, attend college, maybe even acquire a Master’s degree, then work on moving up through management toward a C-level job. But experts say it’s precisely those strategies and decision-making roles that will be performed better by AI than humans. AI will be able to process millions of data points and predict which international markets will be most profitable in the time it takes for a human executive to refill his coffee cup.

If your job is being threatened or eliminated by the surge of AI, you may be wondering what options you have for earning a good living throughout the rest of your working years. You probably can’t outrun the future, changing industries in the hopes of buying a few years at a time. Even IT jobs are being replaced by the AI they developed; coders will be as rare as telephone switchboard operators by mid-century.

​The answer might be in joining what Jim Farley calls the “essential economy,” which he defined as everything that gets “moved, built, or fixed.”

The “essential economy” will always be essential.

Even the most advanced technology has limitations; robots aren’t nimble, and AI doesn’t have hands. That means that services that require humans to perform them will always be with us. The essential economy jobs aren’t glamorous -heating and A/C replacement and repair, home maintenance, cleaning offices, plumbing, roofing, painting, fixing garage door openers – but when we need those services, we can’t dial the phone fast enough. There will always be a market for home and business services.

 Many executives overlook the opportunity to buy one of these businesses because they don’t consider themselves technical – they went to business school, not welding school. But over the years, I’ve spoken to franchisors in the service industry, and they’ve all told me the same thing: we can hire someone to turn a wrench. When we sell a franchise, we look for management and business expertise.

The business owner works on the business, not in the business.

The owner of a service business is not going to be doing the actual work. Their job is to market and grow the business. For example, Aamco, the popular automotive repair franchise, doesn’t look for mechanics as owners. The owners will never turn a wrench. The franchisor seeks professionals who understand management, hiring, marketing, and other essential business functions.

Many franchise owners don’t do the jobs; they create the jobs. And there’s already more work than the current blue-collar workforce can handle. Economists say we have a deficit of 600,000 workers in factories and nearly half a million in construction, for example.

I think we’ll see a massive shift in what young people choose to study and where they choose to work. There are about two million fewer students in traditional four-year universities now than in 2011, according to higher education studies. In the first quarter of 2024, Gen Z made up 18 percent of the workforce, according to the Department of Labor, but 18 to 25-year-olds made up nearly 25 percent of all new hires in skilled trade industries that year.

AI can’t perform the work, but it can definitely enhance the business.

What’s great about the service industry is that, while AI can’t perform the work, it can enhance the business. AI can dramatically improve marketing, decision-making, data management, online presence, scheduling, and customer care, saving the business owner hundreds of hours of work each year.  

Getting into the service industry may be your opportunity to turn AI from the enemy into an ally.

Change is inevitable—but if you take initiative, you don’t have to be left behind. In fact, you can thrive. Choosing a career in the trades and service industries is a smart move for those who want stability and long-term opportunity. But wait too long, and you risk holding onto outdated skills that employers no longer value.