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Walk onto any construction site in America, and you’ll hear the same story: We can’t find enough skilled workers. Electricians, welders, HVAC technicians, plumbers and heavy-equipment operators are in dangerously short supply, and the gap is widening.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang recently warned that building America’s artificial-intelligence infrastructure will require an army of electricians. The demand for data centers – both cloud and AI – is expected to double year over year. Mike Rowe has been sounding the alarm for years: the most “essential” jobs are the ones our culture stopped celebrating.
Here’s the truth: without skilled tradesmen, America grinds to a halt. No power. No housing. No data centers. No cloud. No AI.
Welder Cedric Smith from the documentary “Skilled.” (Photo courtesy of 3M)
Yet we keep pushing young people toward four-year degrees, often leaving them with six-figure debt, while treating the trades as a second-class option. Meanwhile, a “silver tsunami” is coming as baby boomers and Gen X tradesmen are retiring faster than replacements are entering the field.
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According to Rewiring America, we’ll need 1 million additional electricians in the next decade, on top of today’s workforce of about 800,000.
Failing to emphasize and incentivize skilled work isn’t just a cultural mistake. It’s an economic time bomb.
Fixing the Imbalance: Use the Tax Code
The quickest, fairest way to reverse course is through the tax code.
Here’s our proposal: create aggressive tax breaks for tradesmen themselves, not just the companies that employ them.
If you choose to become an electrician, welder or plumber, you should enjoy the same level of government support that college graduates receive.
- Allow tradesmen to deduct the full cost of their tools, certifications and training.
- Offer meaningful federal tax breaks – or even temporary income-tax exemptions – for every year they remain actively employed in a certified trade.
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If we can make tips non-taxable for service-industry workers, we can certainly extend that logic to the men and women literally rebuilding America’s infrastructure. And frankly, it’s absurd that our active-duty service members or full-time first responders pay federal income taxes at all.
Want to attract a new generation into these professions? Incentivize the behavior that sustains the nation’s backbone.
By their late 20s, these tradesmen could be debt-free, earning solid middle- to upper-class wages, buying homes and raising families; not just chasing the American Dream, but rebuilding it.
Compare that with many college grads today: burdened by debt, underemployed and watching automation threaten their jobs.
We should reward the work America’s future depends on – not funnel kids into a path that may not exist a decade from now.
This Is Also About National Security
This isn’t only an economic issue, it’s a national-security one.
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The Pentagon already warns of labor shortages in shipbuilding and mission-critical infrastructure. Data centers – the central nervous system of AI and national defense – are desperate for electricians and cooling technicians.
Without a robust pipeline of skilled tradesmen, our ability to compete with China in the AI race collapses before it begins.
Our national security depends as much on the American welder and HVAC tech as it does on the fighter pilot. It’s time our policies reflected that truth.
This Isn’t a Subsidy, It’s an Investment
Critics will call this a giveaway. They’re wrong.
Tax incentives aren’t handouts, they’re investments in the backbone of America, in the men and women who keep the lights on, the water running and the servers cool.
If Washington can shovel billions into green-energy dreams and Ivy League programs producing fragile, perpetually offended graduates, then it can certainly afford tax relief for the Americans who actually build, wire and power this country.
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The conservative answer is clear: reward hard work, build self-reliance and restore dignity to the trades.
Congress Should Act Now
Year after year, calls for reform fall on deaf ears in Washington, especially among Democrats more interested in partisan shutdown theatrics than solving the real problems facing working Americans. It’s time to stop putting politics above people and start rebuilding the middle class that keeps this country running.
Congress can start by:
- Creating aggressive tax breaks for individual tradesmen tied to accredited training and continued employment.
- Allowing full deductions for tools, certifications and licensing fees.
- Offering bonus incentives for those who stay in the trades 10, 15 or 20 years to retain mission-critical expertise.
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This is simple, fair and fiscally sound. The alternative is to watch American growth and resilience grind to a halt.
America’s prosperity and security now depend on the trades more than ever. Let’s start treating tradesmen and women with the respect they have earned.
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Kirk Offel is a Navy submarine veteran and the CEO of Overwatch Mission Critical, a Texas-based talent incubator that trains and hires future leaders for high-skill jobs in the data center industry.
