I grew up in Western Pennsylvania in the shadow of Pittsburgh’s steel industry and the hole it left behind in communities like mine.
I come from a long line of coal miners, steelworkers and carpenters. I remember the layoffs, the slowdowns and the uncertainty that sat quietly at kitchen tables. I remember the look on people’s faces when work disappeared. Not just because of the financial strain, but because work was tied to identity, pride and purpose.
The message handed down to my generation was simple: Go to college. Get a degree. Find a safe career. Don’t end up trapped in the instability that defined so much of industrial America in the 1980s.
I believed it. I lived it. And in many ways, it opened doors for me that my parents and grandparents never had.
Now I’ve watched one of my daughters graduate from Penn State, with another not far behind, and I find myself wondering what kind of future we’ve prepared them for.
Because suddenly the definition of “safe career” feels shaky again.
Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing the workforce (or it’s not; it depends on who you ask, who has money riding on the outcome, or who stands to gain from quarterly efficiency profits by investing in software and reducing headcount), especially the kinds of entry-level office jobs young graduates once relied on to get started. Roles in marketing, HR, finance, customer service and even legal research already are being reshaped or reduced by agentic software.
At the same time, industries we once encouraged young people to avoid are desperate for workers. Construction companies, manufacturers and skilled trades employers cannot fill open positions fast enough.
It feels like the social contract has flipped upside down almost overnight.
For decades, we pushed an entire generation away from working with their hands and toward working behind screens. We treated trade careers like a fallback plan instead of a meaningful path. Parents wanted something “better” for their kids because many of them had lived through the instability of physical labor industries firsthand. I once interviewed a manufacturing executive, and he said that the jobs his company had were the kinds of jobs that were good for the neighbor’s kid. This is the kind of image that these jobs have here.
Now the careers that looked stable are facing disruption, while many of the jobs we dismissed are becoming essential again.
The irony is not lost on me.
The path my family spent generations trying to escape may now offer more security than the one we encouraged our children to pursue.
But I do not think the answer is simply telling everyone to abandon college and go into the trades. That would be repeating the same mistake in the opposite direction. Technology will eventually reshape those industries too. AI and robotics are not stopping with office work.
What worries me most is that we are asking young people to make life-defining decisions in the middle of massive uncertainty, while pretending we still have a clear roadmap for success.
We do not. There is no workforce commission thinking about human labor and digital labor and how to adopt and adapt. Money is the only thing driving this train. This new technology is not just new technology. All of our past technological advances were meant to extend our human capabilities; this agentic advancement is the only technological advancement meant to mimic our ability, to replace our abilities, not extend them.
And maybe that honesty matters more than pretending otherwise.
The future of work is changing faster than our education systems, faster than our institutions and faster than most parents know how to explain to their kids. A degree alone is no longer a guarantee. Neither is a trade. Neither is loyalty to one company nor one career path.
Adaptability and the ability to navigate high levels of ambiguity will become the most valuable skills of all.
As a father, that is both unsettling and freeing.
Maybe the conversation we should be having with the next generation is not about finding one safe path. Maybe it is about learning how to stay curious, resilient, creative and human in a world that keeps changing beneath our feet.
I just wish we were having that conversation more honestly and outside of the shadow of a string of inevitable blockbuster IPOs.
Nathan Wadding is founder and CEO of Kindling Culture Agency.