It comes out May 2nd.

Right.

And that show wouldn't exist without Zuckerberg.

Okay.

So let's hear about it.

So six years ago.

Mark invites me down to Facebook, and he talks about this thing called Watch, Facebook Watch.

The revolutionaries were first viewed as insane always.

aria aria with the touch a touch yeah a little a little just a little piece of the italian thing just for the sophisticated folk in the audience

you have sophisticated folks i think so hey you just said something you mind if i take a quick digression you may whatever it was you were trying to say what you said instead was art now What happens when you take the art out of a thing? We took the arts out of high school, the humanities.

And there was a great hue and cry when we cut music programs and things like that.

And that affected me.

And I was one of the ones complaining about it.

But before shop class was shop class, it was called vo-tech.

And before vocational technology was called vo-tech, it was called the vocational arts.

Were you kind of a jerk back then?

third?

Right? And so when I say safety third, just because you're in compliance doesn't mean you're out of danger.

Safety third.

Oh, safety third was a turn of phrase that came out of dirty jobs about 10, 12 years ago.

And it was in direct response to an expression you'll be more familiar with, which was, of course, safety first.

Safety is important.

Everybody knows that who's ever worked around machines like this or has just tried to get through life.

because you were a potential victim of a an attempt to change work a well-intended

Here's what Dirty Jobs host and creator Mike Rowe told me on this glaring issue.

We've been talking about this at MicroWorks for 18 years, and it's both gratifying and terrifying, if I'm being honest, to see the numbers made real.

A lot of research went into this report, and there's a lot of data in it, and we could probably talk for an hour about what it all portends and just scratch the surface.

But the bottom line is the skills gap is real.

It's really wide.

It's really dangerous.

And now as we enter what looks to be a really new infrastructure build out and a really new economy, it's going to be the pinch point.

But what if there's, we don't have the infrastructure built by the humans to support this technology, then none of it comes to life.

It's good enough

...

I also think that if he had a bunch of money, he still, he's a guy who really enjoys the simple life, and, uh, I respect that.

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Tell me a bit about how attitudes towards those jobs have changed since then and where we are right now in this moment.

Well, on a personal level, it's beyond strange to see the headlines catch up with a message.

You know, we started MicroWorks in 2008, and nobody really disagreed with me back then.

The basic argument was you got a couple million good jobs that don't require a four-year degree.

that employers are struggling to fill.

The jobs are essential, but for whatever reason, they're not lauded, they're not celebrated, and most of them are out of sight and out of mind.

The premise for my foundation rhymed with the show I was working on, Dirty Jobs, pretty well.

What does a tech juggernaut like Meta get out of a project like this?

That's

exactly what it was.

Yeah.

And of course, Fred played in a marching band for years.

He played every instrument.

We didn't know any of this at the time.

We just saw this crazy pied piper marching up and down the normally sedate halls of Overly.

So the question then is from Fred, if the grandfather's humility and the scout master taught you how to embrace the suck, what'd Fred teach you? What's that word?

I mean, w- from your vantage point, what do you think is going on?

I wrote a book a while ago.

It's not really a book.

It was, I was in business with Caterpillar, and they wanted to do something to draw attention to the work we were doing together around the skills gap.

And I jokingly said, "Well, look, if I just write a book about the issue, you can publish it for me," 'cause I didn't have time to go to a publisher and go through the whole mishegoss of writing a book.

And they were like, "Yeah, do that." So the book is called Profoundly Disconnected, and it's really just a collection of essays I had written over the years that answer that question.

And in short, it was a look at the things from which we've become untethered, fundamental, like, primal things, and the way in which that happens, which is almost invariably in dribs and drabs.

So when you look at, you know, what's transpired in the state of California for the last several decades, do you see this as a state-specific problem? Do you see it as, uh, like, a clue as to where the rest of the country is headed?

I mean, w- from your vantage point, what do you think is going on?

I wrote a book a while ago.

It's not really a book.

It was, I was in business with Caterpillar, and they wanted to do something to draw attention to the work we were doing together around the skills gap.

And I jokingly said, "Well, look, if I just write a book about the issue, you can publish it for me," 'cause I didn't have time to go to a publisher and go through the whole mishegoss of writing a book.

And they were like, "Yeah, do that." So the book is called Profoundly Disconnected, and it's really just a collection of essays I had written over the years that answer that question.

And in short, it was a look at the things from which we've become untethered, fundamental, like, primal things, and the way in which that happens, which is almost invariably in dribs and drabs.

So when you look at, you know, what's transpired in the state of California for the last several decades, do you see this as a state-specific problem? Do you see it as, uh, like, a clue as to where the rest of the country is headed?

So tell me how this program is going to work.

Well, I mean, yeah, the data centers are a big deal, and it's worth saying, too, that it's not like they just popped out of nowhere on account of AI.

Data centers have been around for decades, and they're at the root of every form of modern connectivity that we know of.

It's just a question of scaling them, and the challenge is to do it yesterday.

We're in a race.

China plays for keeps, and this is a really important part of building out what Larry Fink has described as a $10 trillion infrastructure.

We have the money and we have the will, but we just don't have the skilled labor in place.

What's changing or what about the calculus do I have wrong?

[laughs]

Look, this is so far out of my lane, but, like, the buzz is asymmetrical warfare.

The conversation is the, we're never gonna out-manufacture China, never in a million years.

They delivered 982 ships last year.

We delivered six.

All right? We're not even close.

So, they're g- they're, they're companies like, like Hadrian and Apex and, and Mock who I'm actually shooting with them later this week, but they're making very, very cheap, very lethal weapons.

Yeah.

Rebuilding, to me, [laughs] is going to be a very big growth industry, and there's just not enough people to do it.

We had $1.1 trillion in outstanding student loans when you and I talked last.

Now it's 1.8 trillion.

Most of that's held by kids who either started a four-year degree and dropped out or who got one and statistically aren't working or not working in their chosen field.

That's a bad number.

Meanwhile, we've got $400,000, 400,000 jobs in construction right now, twice that many in the defense industrial base.

It's bananas.

Right.

Control it.

Look, there's an old Latin expression.

Hic sunt draconis.

Here be dragons, right? Used to see it on the old maps.

You don't quite know what's going to happen if you're in the Nina, the Pinta, or the Santa Maria, and you're just sailing.

Some people say you're going to fall right off the edge of the earth.

Look, we don't know.

You know, it's not the next hundred years, but some people, you know, 60, 70 years in front of them going, well, I will I be able to make a difference? Or am I just going to be, as Elon Musk says, playing golf or listen to headphones and virtual glasses and that'll waste my life away that way?

How did you talk the Pentagon into giving you $10 million?

Well, it only took 15 years.

I went to Congress literally 15 years ago.

I testified before a House committee and then in front of the Senate as well on behalf of my own foundation, MicroWorks, just to talk about the need to close the skills gap and make a more persuasive case for a bunch of great jobs.

It didn't require a four year degree that nobody seemed to want.

Flash forward 15 years.

Turns out these are AI proof six figure jobs that we're talking about.

What is going on here?

Aren't we saying the same thing? Won't all our construction projects be robotics? Won't all our pipe fitting skills be robotics? Won't all our ship building

be robotic? It was impossible during the agricultural revolution to imagine the industrial revolution.

It was impossible.

at the height of the Industrial Revolution, to imagine the revolution in financial services and then technology.

And it's virtually impossible now to imagine what the world's going to look like.

Never mind 100 years.

That's so far off the grid.

And I'm somewhat facetious right here, but I'm not really.

... where the kids, the, the males, the males, the men in our society are just sort of sitting there at home, living in the basement and looking at videos.

I hate to paint with too broad a brush, but when you get to that number, 6.97 million, that's never happened in this country before, not in peacetime anyway.

And the guest you should really have to answer that question, you know, with all the impressive credentialing behind his name, is Nick Eberstadt.

He wrote an extraordinary book called Men Without Work in 2005, which became sort of the operating manual for my own foundation to a point, and republished it during the lockdowns because everything he had predicted or prophesied, uh, came true.

So with regard to that cohort, roughly seven million guys sitting around, the question, or at least the first question, isn't what are they doing, it's what aren't they doing? And what they're not doing is volunteering, uh, through their local church.

They're not participating in the Kiwanis Club or the Jaycees or the Rotary or the Lions Club.

They're not involved in SkillsUSA or Future Farmers of America or the 4-H Club or the Boy Scouts.

Ah.

Where do you stand on it? Are you worried about the building of data centers?

Look, I don't wanna be glib about it the way I often am.

There's some things about AI that frankly worry me to death, but data centers I've seen this play before, man.

I, I've, I've seen it with Y2K.

I've seen it with 5G.

I've seen it with the pandemic.

I've seen it with global cooling.

But this would be plumbers and pipe fitters and electricians, right? And they'll be turning to Mike Rowe to do that, correct?

... and competency is important

importantWe made the point earlier, I think, that, you know, our frustration with the trades sometimes is rooted in our inability to do the work ourselves.

So I don't know if there's a corollary between jumping a fence or throwing a punch or changing a tire with being able to change your brakes, you know? Like, I can still change a tire.

That...

Like, the mechanics of that haven't really evolved to leave me in the dark yet.

And yeah, I think I know how to throw a punch.

And speaking of fences, man, quick sidebar.

I would probably compare it to 20 years ago.

What what is the problem here? What is the need and how does the 10 million dollars solve it?

Well, on the one hand, it's a big check.

On the other hand, it's a drop in the bucket.

The problem is enormous growing.

Widening would be the better word.

The skills gap is real.

When I started MicroWorks in 2008, it was 2.3 million open jobs.

How much of this is the stigma, not so much for people, for people who want a paycheck, but for parents and for friends and for peers of saying, hey, I'm going to trade school to be a welder versus, hey, I'm going to learn to be an accountant?

That's, that's unsustainable.

Yeah.

We're, we're rounding up to two.

It's actually, like, 1.728 or something.

But yeah, I mean, the...

this is the reason why I was always perplexed by the way the issue becomes partisan.

I guess everything becomes partisan, uh, in this day and age.

Yeah

A lot of the platitudes, as you say, on office walls, uh, about teamwork and, and passion and perseverance and all this that, uh, there is a different view, and you take that different view, and so let's talk about that.

Well, if you think about all of what passes for good advice, you can really just give me a topic and I can give you the Dirty Jobs corollary to it.

Teamwork, for instance.

I mean, we're...

We spend a lot of time talking about the importance of working as a team, and obviously there are tons of examples Where that makes perfect sense to understand and embrace, but it's so easy to go too far, and that's typically what we do.

When we take a gem or a kernel of good advice, we, we become slavish to it.

And our current obsession with teamwork, I think, is another good example.

Exactly.

Love that.

And I don't think he'd object.

I, I don't know if it's gonna happen or not, but I would not be surprised if Jim Farley started building, um, auto shops and training facilities under the Ford umbrella, just like Henry did 100 years ago.

The, uh, the skills gap is so real right now.

Uh, those 5,000 empty bays are not anecdotal.

I-- Not, not a week goes by where I don't get a call from some industry leader, including Jim, who-- that, that wants to talk about the extraordinary Opportunities within their own silo.

And it's changed.

Mm-hmm.

No.

All right.

So in 2009, that was the pitch.

There was a big infrastructure pitch, and President Obama had pledged to create three million shovel-ready jobs, and I wrote him a letter that you can find today, and I just said, "Look, man, I'm rooting for you.

I love it." Remember, Dirty Jobs is killing it at this point, and I'm, I'm out there, and I'm saying, "I'm not an expert, but from what I've seen, and I have had a front row seat for a while to a lot of this, I don't think you can-- I think you're gonna have an easier time filling these positions if you're talking to a country who feels enthused about picking up a shovel, right? And if, if you're assuming that shovel-ready jobs are just gonna be filled because you create them, I, I'm afraid you're gonna have a hard road." Right? So I-- that's my message.

A year ago, I was at a, uh, an energy conference in Pittsburgh held by, convened by Dave McCormick, who I know you know.

Senator McCormick does this, right? All the cats are there, man.

Then you are the noise.

And people said, OK, we have to stop demonizing dads and we have to start making not being a father shameful rather than being a strong father shameful.

It's a pendulum.

And you're right.

With Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver, we were all the way in that direction.

And then we came all the way back in the other direction.

And that's just what we do.

It's the fault in our stars, I think.

But be so successful at, and yet be so scared and feel as though you are failing.

Welcome to Colorado.

Safety first.

What if OSHA got it wrong? What if it's really safety third, right? And so when I say safety third, just because you're in compliance doesn't mean you're out of danger.

Safety third.

Oh.

Oh.

Safety third was a turn of phrase that came out of Dirty Jobs about ten, twelve years ago, and it was in direct response to an expression you'll be more familiar with, which was, of course, safety first.

Yeah.