In 2025, Ford launched the Essential Economy initiative to support the people, businesses and systems that build, move, power, and maintain our country. The Essential Economy is made up of critical sectors like construction, first response, utilities, agriculture, logistics, natural resources and others that form the backbone of American life and industry. In the United States, the Essential Economy drives $12 trillion of GDP — roughly 43% of our economic output — spanning 95 million jobs, 3 million businesses of every size, and public services we all rely on. A strong Essential Economy is vital for a strong America and it continues to be the engine of the American Dream, turning hard work into upward mobility.
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As Mike Rowe said at #FordAccelerate, the conversation around the skilled trades is not about college versus essential trades. It’s about showing there are multiple paths to a good career and a fulfilling life. mikeroweWORKS Foundation #SkilledTrades #EssentialEconomy Ford and the Essential Economy
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Four in ten people who finish skilled trades training have left the trades within five years. That’s a big leak in the pipeline, but it doesn’t leak the same way everywhere. When we looked across 124 trades, the pattern was hard to miss, and it comes down to basic economics. Electricians and crane operators start at $70,000 or more, and people stay in those trades. In the trades where pay lags, people leave. “Different trades have different gaps,” our President, Matt Sigelman, said at the Ford Motor Company Pro Accelerate event on September 30th. “Recognizing that will allow us to solve this breakdown in the pipeline more effectively.” If we treat the trades as one big bucket, we’ll keep missing the problem. Look at them one at a time, and the fixes come into focus. Thank you to Jim Farley and the Ford Pro team at Ford Motor Company for bringing this conversation to the table, and for investing in the people who keep America working. The Burning Glass Institute and Jobs for the Future (JFF) developed the new State of America’s Skilled Trades Workforce Report and its interactive dashboard for the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades. Together they map supply and demand for 124 skilled trades in every state, showing where the pipeline is falling short and how to close the gap. 👀 Read the report: https://lnkd.in/ehesxNaC 📊 Explore the dashboard: https://lnkd.in/ggyvSgJ4 #FordProAccelerate #SkilledTrades #WorkforceDevelopment #FutureOfWork
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What CEOs and business leaders should keep in mind as they look toward the future of recruiting the next generation of essential workers. If you missed the #FordAccelerate livestream, watch it here: https://lnkd.in/gJjjv59H Thanks to Diane Brady, Dan Peyovich, Dan Schulman, Dave Regnery, Chris Nelson and Patti Poppe for joining us at this year’s Accelerate! Follow Ford and the Essential Economy for more updates. #SkilledTrades #EssentialEconomy
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I shared a few weeks ago about what a meaningful day I spent in Detroit speaking and learning at Ford Accelerate the Essential Economy summit. Here is a bit more about why. For all of the leaders there, from big companies to nonprofits like, it was more than business; it was personal. Here is a clip of my conversation with Ford CEO Jim Farley, Alphabet and Google President and CIO Ruth Porat, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, and Carhartt CEO Linda Hubbard about why this work matters. We all have a story, whether it is about our family, where we come from or the community we live in. Creating meaningful career paths forward matters deeply, especially in a moment like this. Bravo to Jim and the team at Ford Motor Company for caring about these issues and really doing something about them. We are certainly in a Day 2 for America, and it takes committed leadership at every level to make sure opportunity is broad and accessible in the years ahead. And hats off to the remarkable Lauren Mensch Rozbruch who executive produced the event. You may know Lauren as our morning show executive producer at CNN and I have loved working with her ever since. #Accelerate2026 Ford and the Essential Economy [Read more here in this annual Skilled Trades report that goes state by state and will be updated each year: https://lnkd.in/e8-29PzG ]
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The skilled trades can offer a stable career path for people looking to learn new skills that will benefit them for years to come. At our #FordAccelerate event in September, Ruth Porat shared a story that resonated with her about a single mom that pursued a new career as a welder to support her family. There are an estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs that could go unfilled nationally by 2030, which means 2.1 million opportunities for Americans to build meaningful careers, earn good wages, and create greater economic mobility for themselves and their families. Through the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades, Ford Motor Company is working with Google and 16 other companies to not only raise awareness for these opportunities, but also help more people access the training programs, scholarships, and resources they need to pursue them. Follow our new Ford and the Essential Economy page, where we'll be sharing updates on the progress we’re making. #EssentialEconomy #SkilledTrades
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When it comes to the skilled trades, America is running hard just to stand still. Over the next decade, we're projected to create 600,000 net new trades jobs, but we'll need to fill roughly 17 million openings. In any other field, 600,000 new jobs would be enviable expansion of opportunity. But it's dwarfed by what we need merely to keep today's industries staffed. Of the roughly 1.7 million openings each year, The Burning Glass Institute’s new research with Jobs for the Future (JFF) finds that the overwhelming majority arise because workers retire or leave their trade. Against a current skilled trades workforce of 18.4 million, that's equivalent to refilling roughly one in eleven positions every year. At that pace, in about 11 to 12 years we'll need to refill as many positions as the entire skilled trades workforce has today just to maintain capacity. And as experienced tradespeople retire, we lose not only their labor but often the mentors and supervisors who help train their successors. The challenge is all the more daunting when you consider that the talent pipeline isn’t just thin. It’s leaky. Only 48% of those who start an apprenticeship or postsecondary trade program finish, and only 29% are still working in their field 5 years later. Arizona's skilled trades employment has grown 23% since 2019, faster than any other state. Yet just 41% of its apprentices complete. To compensate, it’s needed to attract a net 3,700 skilled trades workers per year, essentially importing the talent that it’s unable to build. But moving people around doesn’t make more of them. There's a lesson here for economic development. Announcing a new factory, data center, or infrastructure project is good news, but beneath needs to be a workforce plan. We need to anticipate replacement demand, improve training completion, and build the capacity to prepare new workers before projects are competing for the same limited talent. Explore the data from our new research on behalf of the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades: https://lnkd.in/g3GavgNE. Thanks to Burning Glass Institute colleagues Erik Leiden, Harry Carr, Luke Chen; to Maria Flynn and Molly Blankenship at JFF; to Joseph Fuller at Harvard Business School whose excellent forward to the draft frames the imperative; and to Jim Farley and Mary Culler at Ford Motor Company for their leadership in bringing urgent priority to the skilled trades. #jobs #careers #humanresources #economics #skills #skilledtrades
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It was great sitting down with Christine Romans and NBC News during #FordAccelerate to talk about the Essential Economy and skilled trades. Grateful to be working alongside Linda Hubbard, Ruth Porat, Larry Fink and other leaders in our Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades to tackle this problem together. Ford and the Essential Economy #skilledtrades #essentialeconomy https://lnkd.in/gPWsuPbv
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For decades, our society has told a generation of American kids that in order to have a good life they needed to sit in a college classroom for four more years after high school, take on the debt, and get a degree. We told generations of capable kids that working with your hands was a fallback rather than a calling. We're now facing the consequences. That's why Ford Motor Company joined with BlackRock, Google and Carhartt to founded the Alliance for America's Skilled Trades to build job pipelines, launch a skilled trades report and grow a national movement to support the Essential Economy. Our recent report found that only about a third of teenagers believe a career in the trades is “respected.” But as Larry Fink said at our recent #FordAccelerate event, even as new technologies arise, the skilled trades will remain a reliable path to a great career and a rewarding life. To join us in this effort, please follow our new Ford and the Essential Economy page, where we'll be sharing updates, resources and the progress we see along the way. #EssentialEconomy
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Here’s a good look at how Ford Motor Company and the Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades are working together to support young people pursuing careers in the skilled trades. https://lnkd.in/gcb2Mj7t Ford and the Essential Economy #EssentialEconomy
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The U.S. needs a national strategy to revitalize the essential economy — that is, everything that is built, moved and fixed in this country. It’s the foundation of Americans’ daily lives, but it has been neglected for too long — and the cracks are showing. Today in The Washington Post, Walter Isaacson and I lay out the realities of this crisis and the signs of progress being made. In the 1950s and ‘60s, we looked to the stars to spark a national movement, with investments in science and math education. Today, let’s look to the earth — to the roads, the pipes and the buildings that make our lives possible. The country demands it. And the next generation deserves it. https://lnkd.in/g5e3bEtd #EssentialEconomy #SkilledTrades Ford Motor Company Ford and the Essential Economy