85 Percent of Jobs Are About to Change - What Happens Next? - Jason Altmire (Video)

Eighty=five percent of jobs are about to change, whether you’re ready or not. The question is, are you any good at the part AI can’t do?

In this 29 April 2026 published video, host Mike Rowe talks with Jason Altmire, a three-term Congressman from Pennsylvania turned workforce advocate, who has spent several years staring straight at a problem most of us would rather ignore. And trust me, it’s a big one. We’re talking about a country with millions of unfilled jobs, trillions of dollars in infrastructure on deck, and not nearly enough skilled people to do the work. Meanwhile, we’ve got record numbers of college grads, many of whom can’t find jobs in their field and are buried in debt, or both. If that sounds like a paradox, it is. And Jason has the receipts.

We dig into the stigma that’s haunted the skilled trades for decades, the political and cultural forces that pushed “college for all” into overdrive, and the uncomfortable truth that we may have overcorrected ourselves into a corner. But this isn’t just doom and gloom. There are reasons for optimism because this is a problem we can fix. From companies building their own trade schools to young people (and not-so-young people) reinventing themselves mid-career, there’s a quiet shift happening in this country. A shift toward what Jason calls “opportunity pluralism”, the idea success doesn’t come from one path but many.

We also get into some tricky territory—unions, politics, education policy, and why common-sense solutions aren’t always so common. But through it all, one thing becomes clear: This isn’t a partisan issue. It’s a practical one. If your lights go out, your toilets back up, or your air conditioning doesn’t work in the summer heat, you get bipartisan real fast. If you’ve been told college is the best path for the most people, you might want to think again. Because the race is already on. And whether you like it or not, you’re running. Check out Jason Altmire’s book, Trade Up: Why the Future Belongs to Skilled Trades and How Career Education is Transforming the Workforce: https://tradeupbook.com

https://youtu.be/hALH0ruAeWo

00:00 AI’s impact on jobs
05:32 The politics of education ️
09:35 The skills gap
17:50 Redefining opportunity
22:10 Our pal, Winn Claybaugh
31:42 The nursing shortage
37:50 Six-figure jobs
49:55 Future of trade schools
54:03 SkillsUSA’s impact
01:03:10 Veterans in the trades 
01:07:26 The Jumpstart Bill
01:12:52 The cost of college