As a parent, I once believed I understood the safest path forward. Like many families, my instinct was to place my child firmly on track for a four-year college: earn the degree, explore along the way, and emerge with a credential that would open doors. That pathway felt not only familiar, but responsible—an investment in long-term stability and opportunity. For decades, that assumption held. A bachelor’s degree reliably signaled access to higher earnings, lower unemployment, and a clearer entry into professional life.
And to be clear, that path still holds real value. Workers with bachelor’s degrees continue to earn more on average and experience lower unemployment than those with less education. ¹ That reality is part of why so many of us still see college as the safest bet, and why it remains such a powerful default in how we guide our children.
But the closer I analyze the evolving nature of the current job market and considered the type of future my children are stepping into, the more I’ve realized that the assumptions guiding that decision have not kept pace with the world as it is today.
This is not an argument against college, but an argument against treating it as the default, particularly amid a technological revolution redefining how economies function and how power is distributed globally. In that context, the question shifts. It is no longer simply whether higher education has value, but whether we are aligning our expectations with the kind of workforce the future increasingly demands.
A Narrowing Entry Point
What’s shifting isn’t always obvious at first glance. It shows up at the very beginning of a career, the moment when young adults are trying to gain traction and direction. Recent data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that recent college graduates are encountering a more uncertain entry point. As of 2025, unemployment among recent graduates stood at 5.7%, while underemployment reached 42.5%. ²
This challenges a long-held assumption: that college provides a clear and reliable runway into meaningful work. Part of that change is technological. Artificial intelligence is not eliminating entire professions overnight, but it is reshaping the nature of early-career work in ways that are easy to overlook. Tasks that once defined entry-level positions—basic analysis, drafting, research, and coordination—are increasingly supported or accelerated by AI systems. ³
The impact is subtle but significant. The first rung of the career ladder, where many young adults once learned, made mistakes, and gradually developed expertise, is becoming thinner and more compressed. Opportunities still exist, but they are less forgiving and less clearly structured.
A Workforce Shift Hiding in Plain Sight
Concurrently, an equally important transformation is underway, one that isn’t always understood as directly tied to these shifts. Across party lines, the United States has begun reinvesting in domestic manufacturing, infrastructure, and energy systems through legislation such as the CHIPS and Science Act and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. These efforts reflect a broader strategic priority: rebuilding domestic capacity and strengthening the workforce required to sustain it.
The scale of this shift is significant. Semiconductor-related investments alone are expected to support more than 115,000 manufacturing and construction jobs. ⁴ Infrastructure projects are expanding nationwide, spanning transportation, energy, and critical systems. And importantly, many of these roles do not require a traditional four-year degree. ⁵
At the same time, the workforce needed to support these efforts is aging out. Brookings estimates that nearly 17 million workers in infrastructure-related roles may exit the labor force over the next decade due to retirements and occupational shifts. ⁶
Taken together, these trends point to something deeper than a changing job market. They reflect a reordering of national priorities around human capital—what skills are needed, where talent is concentrated, and how the workforce is developed, sustained, and replaced over time. The country is rebuilding critical systems while the workforce required to operate them is thinning. This gap is already shaping hiring demand, training pipelines, and the types of careers that are becoming increasingly stable and essential.
Where Opportunity Is Growing
This convergence—technological disruption on one side, workforce demand on the other—creates an opportunity landscape different than one many of us were prepared to navigate. The roles growing in importance don’t always look like the careers we were encouraged to pursue. They are found in the systems that keep the country running: energy grids, infrastructure networks, manufacturing floors, and digital-physical environments.
Electricians, engineering technicians, advanced manufacturing operators, cybersecurity specialists, and network professionals sit at the center of this shift. Employment projections reflect this demand. Electricians are expected to grow by 9% over the next decade, with approximately 81,000 openings annually. Information security roles are projected to grow by nearly 30%, reflecting the increasing importance of digital infrastructure and system protection. ⁷
Such jobs are evolving alongside technology, often requiring fluency in both digital systems and real-world environments. What distinguishes many of these roles is not that they avoid technology, but that they integrate it in ways that are harder to fully automate.
Research supports this distinction. Brookings has found that a significant majority of infrastructure-related occupations face lower exposure to AI-driven displacement compared to many office-based roles. ⁸ In a labor market increasingly shaped by automation, that kind of durability carries real weight, and is a factor that parents must carefully consider.
Rethinking Education Pathways
For years, I viewed trade and technical pathways as alternatives to college, options for students who chose not to pursue a traditional degree. But that framing no longer reflects reality. Today, technical and trade-focused institutions offer associate and bachelor’s degrees, stackable credentials, and programs that integrate classroom instruction with hands-on experience. These pathways often allow students to gain real-world exposure earlier, enter the workforce sooner, and in many cases, take on less debt in the process.
More directly aligned with industries facing workforce shortages, trade and technical pathways offer an education model designed to signal knowledge and build capability.
The Cultural Shift Starts at Home
For many parents, adjusting perception is where the hardest shift occurs. For decades, skilled trades and technical careers have been framed as secondary options rather than deliberate choices. That message, even when unintentional, carries weight. Kids pick up on how we talk about success, what we emphasize, what we celebrate, and what we quietly deprioritize.
Those signals shape how they see themselves and their future.
If we continue to present these paths as “less than,” our kids will internalize that hierarchy. If we begin to present them as viable, respected, and not just increasingly important, but truly critical to national priorities, that changes the calculus not just for individual families, but for how the workforce develops over time.
Redefining the Path Forward
I still want the same things for my children that I always have: stability, purpose, and the ability to build a meaningful life with lasting success. What’s changed is how I think they might get there. For some, that path will still run through a traditional four-year colleges and universities. Increasingly for others, it may look different—a technical program, an apprenticeship, or a hybrid model that blends education with real-world experience from the start.
The goal isn’t to replace one path with another. It’s to recognize that the landscape has changed, and to make sure we’re not guiding our children based on assumptions that no longer fully apply.
At a moment when the country is rebuilding its industrial and technological foundations, the future isn’t just being shaped in classrooms or offices, it’s being built by those prepared to do the work. As parents, we have a role in helping our children see where that work is and what it’s worth. ❦
References:
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Unemployment Rates and Earnings by Educational Attainment, 2024.
Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Labor Market for Recent College Graduates, 2025.
Anthropic, Labor Market Impacts of AI, 2025.
U.S. Department of Commerce, CHIPS and Science Act Investment Summary, 2024.
U.S. Department of Transportation, Bipartisan Infrastructure Law Workforce Fact Sheet, 2023.
Brookings Institution, Building a Stronger Infrastructure Workforce, 2024.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 projections.
Brookings Institution, AI Exposure and the Built Environment Workforce, 2024.
