Skip to the page
Not Just College

For parents of teenagers headed into the trades

AI and the Job Market

This is the part of the subject where confident nonsense is thickest, in both directions. The trades are not uniformly safe from automation, coding is not uniformly doomed, and most of the percentages circulating online are two different metrics being mixed together.

These pages stick to what is measured, name what is not, and lean on the projections the Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes itself.

  1. Are the Trades Getting Oversaturated?

    Everyone is telling teenagers to go into the trades. Here is what federal projections say about whether the window is closing, trade by trade.

  2. Which Jobs Are Actually Safe From AI?

    Nobody can name a safe job. What the best per-occupation research measures, what it does not, and which occupations the government projects to shrink.

  3. Data Centre Jobs: What Is Real and What Is Not

    There is no federal job category called data centre technician. So where do those confident salary figures come from, and what is tracked instead?

  4. Should My Teen Still Study Computer Science?

    A fair-minded look at the computing degree question: what federal projections cover, what they do not, and the four tests that work on any path.

  5. My Teen Does Not Want to Go to College

    Questions that separate a considered decision from an avoidant one, what to do if the answer is I do not know, and why this door is not closing.