"AI Won't Stop Your Water Heater From Leaking" : Lowe's CEO Says Skilled Trades Are Gen Z's Job Security Hack

Lowe's Companies  (NYSE:LOW) CEO Marvin Ellison says generative AI won't eliminate all jobs — especially those in skilled trades and customer-facing roles.

He recently argued at a business gathering that "manual and customer-facing roles…are less likely to be replaced by AI." He emphasized frontline resilience: "AI won't stop your water heater from leaking. It isn't going to respond to an electrical issue in your home," illustrating the limits of automation.

Skilled Trades Beat The Robots

"It's not going to respond to an electrical issue in your home," Ellison said in June at the Business Roundtable CEO Workforce Forum. He urged early-career workers to "stay as close to the cash register as you can — stay close to the customers." The point was clear: When a pipe bursts, human skill still matters more than artificial intelligence.

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To address that challenge, the Business Roundtable named Ellison and Carrier Global (NYSE:CARR) CEO David Gitlin as co-chairs of a skilled trades initiative unveiled in June. The plan shares training playbooks and K-12 outreach across 150 companies, tackling a talent gap that leaves about 20 openings for each qualified welder, plumber, or line worker.

Numbers Signal A Shortfall

Federal data backs him up. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment for electricians to jump 11% between 2023 and 2033. Plumbers and roofers each log 6% growth, while construction laborers rise 7%. 

The agency estimates about 80,200 electrician openings each year, driven largely by retirements — proof that machines still need power and pipes.

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Demand is already spilling into entry-level hiring. LinkedIn's "Grad Guide 2025: The Jobs, Industries and Cities on the Rise for New Grads," shows construction, utilities, and oil, gas and mining leading growth for new bachelor's graduates.

Between 2022 to 2032, a McKinsey analysis finds that annual hiring for essential skilled roles will need to be more than 20 times the projected annual increase in net new jobs — a churn rate no chatbot can solve alone.

New Money, New Pipeline

Corporate checks are arriving. The Lowe's Foundation earmarked $50 million in Gable Grants to prepare 50,000 tradespeople by 2027, saying the funding "is vital to address America's workforce shortage." Business Roundtable firms plan to pair that cash with shared curricula and community college partnerships to match supply with demand, in an update to its 2018 Workforce Partnership Initiative.

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Yet AI's trajectory remains contested. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said in May that the technology could erase 50% of entry‑level office roles and push unemployment to between 10% and 20%. 

"We have yet to see any evidence of mass replacement," Brad Lightcap, chief operating officer of OpenAI, said on the "Hard Fork" podcast. Meanwhile, BlackRock Inc. (NYSE:BLK) CEO Larry Fink said at CERAWeek in March that the U.S. could "run out of electricians," underscoring a gap robots cannot fill.

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