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Source: Financial Times https://www.ft.com/content/df07d2dc-dc56-4602-a36f-758860cb1374

Plumbing is the future. Or so Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather of AI”, has said. “The jobs that are going to survive AI for a long time are jobs where you have to be very adaptable and physically skilled, and plumbing’s that kind of job.” He is not the only one. Jensen Huang, chief executive of chipmaker Nvidia, told Channel Four News: “If you’re an electrician, you’re a plumber, a carpenter — we’re going to need hundreds of thousands of them to build all of these factories.”

In the US, according to Jobber, which provides software to trades, when asked which careers feel safest from automation, more than half of parents cited plumbers, carpenters and electricians. Just 18 per cent saw software developers and 11 per cent accountants as resilient professions. Plumbers have become the career talisman in the age of artificial intelligence, as many question the value of a degree, especially with the burden of student debt.

One woman told me that, among middle-class parents in her neck of the woods, the topic has begun to replace the conversation about house prices as their kids approach university age and they weigh the value of higher education against working in a skilled trade. A neighbour’s plumber bragged that his brother was a doctor, yet only one of them had three Porsches.

City & Guilds, which has almost three-quarters of the plumbing qualification market in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, reports a significant increase in the number of people studying for plumbing credentials. Completed apprenticeships nearly doubled to 859 in the year to October 2025, with an uplift in other plumbing qualifications. This is fuelled by worries “over the costs of traditional academic routes and compounded by more recent concerns that some occupations could be threatened by AI”, according to Salim Visram, the training body’s industry manager, although “demand continues to outstrip supply”.

While middle-class parents might see plumbing as a safe career, are they prepared for their offspring to forgo university and enter the trades? When politicians or commentators recommend school leavers become plumbers or electricians, typically they are often referring to other people’s kids.

The Jobber survey found only 7 per cent of parents would prefer their child pursue a trade or vocational programme. Not only did 71 per cent of Gen Z respondents see vocational college as less prestigious than academic college, but 63 per cent of their parents did too.

When Hannah Spencer, the 34-year-old plumber, became the Green Party MP for Gorton and Denton, Jeremy Clarkson, the privately educated motoring broadcaster-turned-farmer, wrote about her limitations. “Can you imagine her in a meeting to decide the future of the Chagos Islands… It’d be hilarious.”

One doctor — the first from her family to go to university — was surprised by her reaction to her son’s decision to become a plumber, feeling “oddly guilty,” as if the hard work her parents put into socially and academically elevating her had been reversed. “I was somehow not paying forward. Am I the blip in my family’s more traditional working-class journey?”

Louise Ashley, associate professor at Queen Mary University of London, who researches social mobility in professional services firms, says if “the social perception of these jobs” among the middle classes evolves, one might expect them to capture a “large share” of trades if they offer “unusually good pay, autonomy and job security”. She says parents may steer children towards the higher-skill end of those occupations.

“That in turn could create a kind of virtuous circle — depending [on] whose perspective; as more middle-class entrants move into these areas, their social prestige may rise, which makes them more attractive to similar families and further reinforces their status.”

Kepler Ridge, who left plumbing after six years to finish a degree in computer science and is now pursuing graduate studies in biology, credits plumbing with enabling him to buy his own home. “I was making great money and wasn’t going into debt for school.” It also helped him learn to focus and manage his ADHD. “I was moving around a lot. I was very active and engaged. For people having a hard time in traditional classes, it is a great route.”

But he cautions against thinking anyone can turn their hand to a skilled trade, and to be prepared for minimal holiday and long hours. “It was extremely physical. I was exhausted at the end of every single day. I found myself wanting to come home and go to bed.”

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