The CEO of the world's largest recruitment firm told young people this week to stop chasing the old college-to-cubicle career path and start looking at skilled trades, where wages have surged 30 percent in the United States over the past four years.
Sander van't Noordende, who runs the Dutch staffing giant Randstad, made the case on CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe" on Wednesday, laying out data that should force a serious rethink of how American families plan for their children's futures, and how policymakers talk about workforce development.
For decades, the default advice from guidance counselors, university administrators, and cultural gatekeepers has been the same: get a four-year degree, land an office job, climb the ladder. That advice now looks increasingly disconnected from the labor market that actually exists. And the people paying the steepest price are the young workers who followed it.
Randstad's data, shared with CNBC, paints a clear picture. Skilled trade wages in the U.S. rose 30 percent over the past four years. The Netherlands saw a 21 percent increase. Germany posted 18 percent. Even the United Kingdom, at the low end, recorded a 9 percent bump.
Those aren't marginal gains. They represent a structural shift in who the economy actually needs.
Mechanics in the Netherlands now average $79,000 a year. In Germany, the figure is $76,600. Average salaries in the U.K.'s housing and construction sector top $78,500. These are solid, middle-class incomes, earned without six-figure student debt and without spending four years studying subjects the labor market has stopped rewarding.
Van't Noordende did not mince words about the old model. In his interview, the Randstad CEO said plainly:
"I would say the days of going to college and doing something in an office, they are over."
He followed that with advice that would make any college admissions office nervous:
"You've got to be smarter than that. I think technology, any kind of technology, is still a good career trajectory."
The demand surge in trades is not just about plumbers and electricians, though those jobs remain strong. It is increasingly driven by the physical infrastructure that the artificial intelligence revolution requires.
Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon have committed to spending nearly $700 billion in combined capital expenditures this year to build their own data centers. That is an almost incomprehensible sum. And every dollar of it needs human hands to pour concrete, run conduit, install cooling systems, and wire server racks.
Van't Noordende made this point in March when he told CNBC:
"The digital revolution requires a massive physical foundation. The debate around AI's impact on the labor market often focuses entirely on...whether generative models will displace white-collar jobs. But a critical reality is being completely overlooked: AI cannot build its own data centers."
A Randstad analysis of 50 million job postings from March confirmed the trend in hard numbers. Between 2022 and 2026, vacancies for robotic technicians increased 107 percent. HVAC engineer openings climbed 67 percent. Industrial automation technician postings rose 51 percent.
These are not jobs that can be offshored or automated away. They require physical presence, technical skill, and hands-on problem-solving, exactly the kind of work that a generation of young Americans were told was beneath them.
While trades workers see rising wages and surging demand, the other side of the labor market tells a grimmer story. April data from the consulting firm Challenger Gray & Christmas found that AI was cited in nearly 50,000 job cuts so far this year in the United States.
Those cuts are concentrated in the very office-based, knowledge-economy positions that the college pipeline was supposed to deliver. The irony is sharp: the technology that Silicon Valley built is now eliminating the white-collar jobs that Silicon Valley's culture told everyone to pursue.
Randstad's own data shows that entry-level workers who do acquire AI skills can command salaries up to 25 percent higher than peers without them. In U.S. software development, entry-level pay jumps from $85,000 to $105,000 with additional AI expertise. Workers holding AI certifications are getting promotions up to 3.5 times faster than their colleagues.
Van't Noordende described AI proficiency as a career accelerant:
"AI is a fast pass to promotion and pay for new entrants into the labour market."
But he added a critical caveat, one that the "learn to code" crowd tends to skip over. Technical skills alone are not enough.
"Provided that you combine it with social skills...the softer skills, the judgement, the collaboration, the empathy... can fast-track your career."
Randstad's data backs this up. Demand for emotional intelligence has surged 173 percent. Demand for creativity has climbed 168 percent. The Randstad CEO said it is "easier" to pick up technical skills, implying that the human capacities, judgment, collaboration, the ability to work with people, are harder to teach and therefore more valuable.
What van't Noordende described are really two parallel opportunities that the American education establishment has spent decades downplaying.
The first is the skilled trades. Electricians, welders, HVAC technicians, plumbers, and construction workers are seeing wage growth that outpaces inflation and college-graduate salary stagnation. The physical economy needs them, and the AI buildout has only intensified that need.
The second is technology, but not the generic "get a computer science degree" advice that has flooded the market with graduates competing for shrinking pools of entry-level coding jobs. Van't Noordende pointed to AI-specific skills layered on top of practical competence. The workers who thrive will be the ones who can combine technical fluency with the judgment and interpersonal skills that machines cannot replicate.
Neither of these paths requires the traditional four-year university experience that American institutions have marketed so aggressively, and so profitably, for decades.
It is worth asking who actually gains when every high school senior is funneled toward a bachelor's degree. Universities collect tuition. Loan servicers collect interest. Administrators collect salaries. And a growing number of graduates collect rejection emails from employers who have moved on.
The people who lose are the students themselves, especially those from working-class families who take on debt they cannot afford for credentials the market no longer values the way it once did.
Meanwhile, the trades that could have offered them a debt-free path to a $79,000 salary went begging for workers.
Van't Noordende's comments carry weight because Randstad is not a think tank with a policy agenda. It is the world's largest recruitment firm, processing millions of job postings and placements. When its CEO says the college-to-office pipeline is finished, he is reading the market, not making a political argument.
The numbers he cited are difficult to argue with. A 30 percent wage increase for U.S. trades workers in four years. A 107 percent jump in robotic technician vacancies. Nearly $700 billion in data-center spending from four companies alone. And nearly 50,000 AI-related job cuts hitting the white-collar workforce this year.
These figures describe a labor market that has already shifted. The question is whether American institutions, schools, parents, policymakers, will catch up, or whether they will keep steering young people into a path that the economy has moved past.
For too long, the people who built things with their hands were treated as a consolation prize. The market just handed them a 30 percent raise and a help-wanted sign. Maybe it's time to listen.