In the race to reshore manufacturing and stay ahead of foreign competition, America needs an abundance of added skilled workers and electricity sources.

“Electrify everything” has been our recent political mantra as key politicians race to replace natural gas and coal-fired generation with vast fields and wildlands of wind turbines and solar panels.

However, that strategy has glaring glitches, which could derail our economic recovery and job creation. For example, it is a bureaucratic nightmare siting power lines and reliable power plants.

“America’s AI gold rush could soon hit a major energy wall,” Morgan Stanley warned. “The United States could face a power shortage of up to 20% by 2028 as artificial intelligence data centers consume massive amounts of electricity. The bank estimates a potential deficit of 13 to 44 gigawatts, equal to the energy use of over 33 million U.S. homes.”

The added problem is most houses aren’t wired to manage the load from electric heating, cooking, clothes dryers, solar panels and vehicle chargers. Coupled with rising electrical load is a shortage of skilled electrical workers needed to rewire homes, make grid modifications and install new electrical generation and transmission capacity.

“Every year for the last 12 years, for every five tradesmen who retire and leave the workforce, two replace them,” Mike Rowe, popular TV host of PBS’s “Dirty Jobs,” reported. “Let that sink in. We’re not just dealing with a skills gap – we’re hemorrhaging capability, institutional knowledge and resilience.”

Rowe also reminds us that AI and automation aren’t going to replace the people who erect bridges; wire, plumb and build houses; and keep vehicles running.

“We are in trouble in our country. We are not talking about this enough,” CEO Jim Farley of Ford Motor Co. told the Wall Street Journal in November. “Specifically, Ford can’t fill 5,000 mechanic jobs that pay $120,000 a year – salaries that Ivy League grads might envy.”

That’s despite the fact that Ford’s pickup segment continues defying predictions of decline, growing nearly 10% year-to-date through November 2025 even though Ford quit making the all-electric version and took a $17.8 billion loss.

Within the U.S., Farley said, “We have over a million openings in critical jobs (such as) emergency services, trucking, factory workers, plumbers, electricians and tradesmen.”

He added: “Government subsidies for college and graduate education have encouraged the young to go to college even though they might be better off learning a trade. This has created a skills mismatch in the labor market. Unemployment among young college grads is increasing, while employers struggle to hire skilled manufacturing workers, technicians and contractors.”

Two years ago, Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed that about 21% of electricians will have hit retirement age in the next 10 years. The agency estimates that annual demand for electricians will grow by 7% over the same span and that between retirements and new demand, there will be nearly 80,000 job openings.

In 2024, Wall Street Journal writer Doug Belkin noted there is an accelerated shift away from the nation’s half-century “college-for-all” model toward a choice of either college or vocational programs, including apprenticeships.

Robert Lerman, a labor economist at the Urban Institute and co-founder of Apprenticeships for America, said “in the past decade, college enrollment has declined by about 15%, while the number of apprentices has increased by more than 50%.”

Part of the solution is apprentice electricians, for example, are not saddled with stifling college loans, and many employers are providing scholarships or even subsidizing technical training.

ZipRecruiter reports students graduating college in 2020 were averaging just over $37,000 in student debt. The average starting salary for an electrical engineer out of school was just over $66,000. Meanwhile, Service Titan said that electricians often attend trade school and avoid most, if not all, of student loan debt.

Interestingly, looking at a listing for an industrial electrician in Vancouver, the starting base wage is as much $66,500 a year. An electrical cable-splicer in the Puget Sound region has an average base wage of $93,400, according to Indeed.com.

Wages are only part of total compensation. When adding in overtime pay and employer-paid benefits, workers could easily earn an added 40% in compensation annually – which is another key enticement to seek careers as skilled workers.

Don C. Brunell is a business analyst, writer and columnist who lives in Vancouver. He can be contacted at [email protected].