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So there's very few things more important than finding out what's going on with the job market, staying ahead of the latest technology. And if you don't, you know, for example, if you're selling horses and income the car, the Model T, you're going to be in trouble. Your business is going to get stuck. And also, do you have skills when you graduate from any university, prestigious, upcoming, emerging? If you have the wrong degree and you can't get a job, you're gonna say to yourself, what was I thinking?
That's why I thought it was so important that I had a chance to sit down and talk with Mike Rowe and Jim Farley. Mike Rowe from Mike Rowe Works, you know him, and Jim Farley, president of Ford. They were very impressive at a conference I saw, so I asked them to come on with us. Here's what they're saying about the future of the job market. The CEO of Micro Works and the CEO of Ford.
We got Micro and we have Jim Farley. Welcome, guys. Thanks so much. Brian, how are you? Mike Percy.
And it's great to have you both together. And I just want to make this an open forum. Mike, the Blue Collar Jobs, you're looking, you're nodding your head. You knew these dujabas are coming. Is there a way to Is there a way to train our people to fill those positions?
Sure. It would be inelegant to take some sort of victory lap on your fine program. But, you know, we've been beating this drum for 17 years now. And not to put too fine a point on this, it's great, by the way, to be here with Jim. We saw each other about a month and a half ago.
He put on a terrific event in Detroit. And we talked about these things at length with the Secretary of Labor, and since then. The thing I think I'd like to start with is a trip to Texas two weeks ago. I finally got a tour of one of those data centers you were just showing. And while I was there, and I swear I'm not making this up, I ran into three electricians.
All of them are under 30. All of them had been poached. three times that year. Wow. All of them were making north of $240,000.
Now That means something else is happening, to your point, while all these other things are happening at the same time. And in this case, I think it simply means that supply and demand have simply got to that place where there's no denying it. We are in such acute Need of more electricians, more welders, more HVAC people. And you could really just. You could limit that.
purely to data centers. I was in the room with Dave McCormick and President Trump back in July, I know Dave's coming on a bit later, where they pledged $92 billion to build more data centers in Pennsylvania alone. Alone. There's so much investment. There's so much pivoting.
I'm the micro guy. Jim is the macro guy. Ford is macro. And I can't wait. To get his take on this.
Jim, I gave you a lot of stats. Mike gave you a lot of facts. Your thoughts. Mm-hmm.
Well, the shortages are real. I'm really glad that we get the chance to talk about this on Such an important show. You know, at Ford we have a shortage of factory workers, but we have a shortage of technicians and dealerships. As Mike said, those jobs, even though it takes a while to get up to speed, you know, we have about 400,000 people That we need. Right this morning at Ford, we had 6,000 stalls that were open with no mechanics in them to fix our vehicles.
The jobs are getting harder, they require Technical support. Innovation.
So I think at Ford we'll solve this problem because we're a fortunate company and we're committed to America. But the issue is, what is the little guy going to do? Yes. The plumber and electrician that owns our super duty, what are they going to do if they don't have the resources at Ford? They're barely getting through the day with a lot of red tape.
For them to try to find the next generation, as Mike said, it's really hard and we have to help them. Companies like Ford have to help. We have a lot more work to do as a whole industry. You know what they say, Mike? This reminds everybody of 2003, because we changed telecoms.
We went from the hard line to the cell phone, and we lost maybe 171,000 jobs, and everyone reconfigured and readjusted. I don't know if you remember back then, you were probably on PM Magazine, but this is something that you can't blame any party for. This is advancement. Should we be welcoming this? And should we as workers be responsible for adjusting, even if you got that Harvard degree?
I don't think it has much to do practically with whether you welcome it or not. It's standing at the door and it's not going to knock. It's coming in. And yeah, I remember 2003. What I don't remember, but what I'm pretty sure did happen was our country pivoted from an agrarian industry or economy into an industrial age and from an industrial age really into kind of a financial age.
And now we're going from this financial age, whatever that is, into clearly a digital age. And we're building the plane in the air. And there is no playbook for this. I think Jim's challenges and experiences at Ford are similar yet different from, say, Alex Karp's over at Palantir.
Now, what I'm interested in, you know, Alex has his own little meritocracy school that he's building there. He's recruiting bright kids straight out of high school and teaching them what he needs them to know. They're also exposing them to the liberal arts, which I just think is brilliant and fascinating. And I know that Jim has talked about building trade schools again within the Ford organization in order to satisfy this need. To me, That's leadership.
You know, and each company is going to have to kind of... Kind of figure out this Rubik's Cube in their own way, which is why I don't think there's a general playbook. But it is super interesting to hear how the smart people among us are going to solve this. Every day, America's first responders stand ready: firefighters, law enforcement, paramedics, doctors, dispatchers, and people who put themselves on the line for public safety. But keeping them connected in moments of crisis has not been easy.
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Learn more on FirstNet.com. It's Will Tain Country. Watch it live at noon Eastern Monday through Thursday at Foxnews.com or on the Fox News YouTube channel. And don't miss the show. Listen and follow the podcast five days a week at Foxnewspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts.
And Jim, before you answer, I have Alex Karp a quote from Palantir's CEO, co-founder, and he says this, AI is going to help many people with vocational training, but no college degree. Make a lot more money because of the value being created.
So to tell somebody who gets that master's degree from Yale that you probably would have been better off from high school going to a trade school, is that the message for parents watching, for 11th graders watching? Yes, it should be. I believe we put too much emphasis on a four-year degree in the United States. If you look back two or three generations, like my grandfather, he got his job at Ford. He put my mom through college.
I went through college. You know, we have a whole, as Mike said, you said, we have a whole generation here that has a new opportunity. And I think our society puts such a pressure.
Now, Mike has been battling this with everything he's done for many, many years and being a spotlight on this. But now, as he said, it's a real thing. Road construction takes longer. People waiting longer for stuff to get fixed on their house. You know, if we want this to change, as a society, we have to ask the question.
Do we really want to put this much pressure on the next generation to get a four-year degree? This is a live debate in my family. My kid learned welding over the summer as a high schooler, and he asked me, Dad, you think it's worth going to college? The CEO of Ford, my wife and I had a big debate about it. I actually asked Mike about it, and I'm fine with whatever he wants to do.
But as a society, we have to have a debate about this. We can't just get stuck with the direction we're going. And that explains a lot of the frustration where people are leaning towards socialism. I need some help. I don't have any stability.
Well, what if you guaranteed me something? And what if I had an enemy and it's called successful people? That's the scary answer that uneducated people or ignorant people are making now and making choices.
Now, the other thing I want to, when we talk about innovation, you talk about China. Mike, I'm sure you've talked to Jim about this. Jim, what did you see in China that almost unnerved you in terms of how advanced they were? I go to China regularly, obviously, but during COVID, something happened that I think many of us were not expecting. They made huge leaps and bounds.
China wants to be the manufacturing, heavy manufacturing source for the world. They now have twice as many car plants as their local market can absorb. They want to export all of that to create these great jobs. We are in a war for manufacturing now globally.
Now, the Trump administration has done a lot of good things here. You know, now we have a real tailwind behind companies like Ford who make 80% of our products in the U.S. But we need to do a lot more. When I went to China, I came back completely different perspective. They want every one of our jobs in our plants.
Wow. And Mike, what does that make you think? We're competing for workers here, and then we have a country. that could take us out manufacturing wise. If I had like one of those big red bells in a fire department, I'd I'd hit it with a hammer.
I'd ring the alarm. This is it. Jim, you can't overstate it. And you can't put it in one vertical. We have to.
Fight this thing on every front. And the front that I'm most interested in is the reason I'm on your show. It's the reason I come on whenever you invite me. We have to keep this front and center. And when Dave McCormick is on later, please thank the senator for me for doing that event.
Because in that room where 35 CEOs pledged $92 billion in front of the president, my message was simple. Carve off a little tiny piece of that. and allocate it to making a more persuasive case for the very jobs that we are desperate to fill. I'm rooting for the president. I love the idea of 2 million new jobs in manufacturing, but you got to admit, when there are 480,000 openings right now that we can't fill, the math is getting a little hinky.
Five retire, two come in. Five out, two in over a decade now. We need to get in front of it. And as I told Jim at our last meeting, I'm like, not a week goes by where somebody doesn't call me to say, Mike, do you know where the tradesmen are? We're going out of our mind trying to hire.
And I say, yeah, I do. They're in the eighth grade. Start now. Be persuasive. Bring shop.
Auto mechanics back and make people excited again. Hey guys, we need another two hours. I don't have it, but I'd love to have you back in a few weeks and we'll continue to update this because I know you're personally making progress getting corporate America to sponsor a lot of your stuff. Jim Farley, Mike Rowe, it was our privilege to have you on. Thanks so much.
Yeah. Nice guys. Appreciate it.
