The guarantee of a good job with a college degree is breaking down with the advent of artificial intelligence and a booming skilled trades economy, according to the CEO of the world's largest recruitment firm.
Speaking on Wednesday on CNBC's Squawk Box Europe, Sander van't Noordende, the CEO of the Dutch staffing agency Randstad, said young workers should rethink what a lucrative career looks like at the moment.
"I would say the days of going to college and doing something in an office, they are over," van't Noordende said. "You've got to be smarter than that. I think technology, any kind of technology, is still a good career trajectory."
He pointed instead to skilled trades, where salaries are rising rapidly as the AI revolution fuels a massive construction and infrastructure boom across the globe. "The skilled trades are coming up rapidly," he added. "I would say you can make a good career and good money in a skilled trade. That's definitely a career track."
According to Randstad data shared with the outlet, wages for skilled trade workers in the United States have climbed 30% in the last four years. Pay rose 21% in the Netherlands, 18% in Germany, and 9% in the United Kingdom over the same period.
Mechanics in the Netherlands now earn an average salary of roughly $79,000, while their counterparts in Germany make about $76,600. In Britain's housing and construction sector, average salaries have climbed above $78,500.
The surge is closely tied to the race among major tech companies to build the infrastructure powering artificial intelligence. The explosive growth of AI requires enormous data centers packed with complicated equipment depends heavily on physical labor.
Earlier this year, van't Noordende warned that many conversations about AI focus too narrowly on whether software will replace office workers. "The digital revolution requires a massive physical foundation," he previously told CNBC in March. "AI cannot build its own data centers."
That reality is translating into unprecedented spending from Silicon Valley. Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are expected to spend nearly $700 billion combined this year on capital expenditures tied largely to AI infrastructure and data center expansion.
Randstad analyzed 50 million job postings and found that between 2022 and 2026, demand for robotics technicians jumped 107%, HVAC engineers rose 67%, and industrial automation technician roles climbed 51%. At the same time, AI itself is creating a new wage divide among younger workers entering the labor market.
Randstad's latest findings show entry-level workers with AI skills are earning salaries up to 25% higher than peers without those capabilities. The difference is especially pronounced in software development, where entry-level salaries in the United States can jump from about $85,000 to $105,000 when candidates have AI expertise.
"AI is a fast pass to promotion and pay for new entrants into the labour market," van't Noordende said. The company also found that workers with AI certifications are getting promoted up to 3.5 times faster than colleagues without them.
But the shift comes as many recent graduates are entering one of the toughest white-collar job markets in years. Consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas reported in April that AI-related restructuring was connected to nearly 50,000 job cuts in the United States so far this year.
Randstad said demand for emotional intelligence surged 173%, while interest in creativity jumped 168%. Van't Noordende argued those human-centered abilities could become just as valuable as technical expertise. "It's easier to pick up technical skills," he said, adding that communication, empathy, and relationship-building are much harder to teach.
