My Son Will Be a Plumber and Not an Executive

My son, at age 22, graduated from a good college 14 months ago with a degree in economics. His grades were well above average. He has friends at several consultancies, including McKinsey. He knows bankers at Goldman Sachs. After looking for a job in finance since his graduation, he has not received a single offer. He has not been asked to come to one interview. The job he was sure he would land with a base salary of $120,000 simply does not exist anymore.

With plans to buy a house and start a family, he has given up on finding the kind of work that traditionally would have been open to him. He has decided the best path forward is to learn a trade that can provide steady, well-compensated employment for decades to come.

Becoming a licensed plumber requires roughly four years of on-the-job training under a licensed professional, combined with vocational school coursework. During that apprenticeship period, he can expect to earn roughly $40,000 to $50,000 a year. The median annual wage for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters was $62,970 in May 2024, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The lowest 10% earned less than $40,670, and the highest 10% earned more than $105,150. For those who move into business ownership, the ceiling is considerably higher. Owners of larger, established firms with multiple crews, commercial contracts, or emergency service agreements frequently clear $150,000 to $250,000 or more.

The market for plumbers is substantial and growing. Plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters held about 504,500 jobs in 2024. Employment in the field is projected to grow 4% from 2024 to 2034, about as fast as the average for all occupations, with roughly 44,000 openings projected each year over that decade. In regions where large numbers of homes are being built, a full calendar of work year-round is a reasonable expectation. Demand for plumbers will stem from new construction as well as the ongoing need to maintain and repair plumbing systems in existing buildings.

So what happened? AI did. My son wanted to be a financial analyst. Those jobs existed in abundance just two or three years ago, structured around analytical work done in support of banking or consulting partners. The path upward pointed toward total annual compensation of $500,000, and for those who made partner, into the millions. Now, large language models handle much of that foundational work.

The research confirms what my son experienced firsthand. Goldman Sachs economists found that AI is already a measurable drag on the U.S. job market, erasing roughly 16,000 net jobs per month over the past year, with the pain falling hardest on Gen Z and entry-level workers. Gen Z workers are disproportionately concentrated in the exact types of routine, white-collar, and administrative roles that AI is best at automating. That pattern shows up sharply in finance. Banks are running leaner analyst classes, smaller than their pre-2023 levels, even as deal pipelines recover. Anthropic’s labor market research found that financial analysts are among the most exposed occupations when combining what large language models can theoretically do with how they are already being used in real workplace settings.

The irony is not lost on anyone: a generation that grew up digital is being edged out of digital-era knowledge work by the very tools it helped normalize. My son understands this. Instead of waiting for a market that has fundamentally changed, he is going to become a plumber.

30 American Jobs Set to Vanish In Less Than 10 Years

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect Bureau of Labor Statistics 2024 figures showing 504,500 total jobs for plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters, a median wage of $62,970, and a top-10% threshold of $105,150, replacing earlier estimates; plumbing business owner income has been revised to a sourced range of $150,000 to $250,000 or more; and April 2026 Goldman Sachs research on AI eliminating roughly 16,000 net U.S. jobs per month, with Gen Z and entry-level finance workers bearing the largest share of displacement, has been incorporated.