In an exclusive interview with Fortune<\/em>, Farley revealed that his son has chosen to spend the summer working as a fabricator in North Carolina rather than taking summer classes. \u201cHe feels like that\u2019s more fulfilling than doing summer school at some fancy college,\u201d Farley said. \u201cI think that\u2019s ironic and also a bit satisfying\u2014that we\u2019re rediscovering the value of these jobs that indeed powered all of us to go to college.\u201d<\/p>\n The comment isn\u2019t Farley\u2019s first on the subject. Last October, Fortune<\/em>\u00a0reported\u00a0on Ford\u2019s Pro Accelerate summit about his son\u2019s skepticism about a four-year degree \u2014 surprising him by saying he had just had a fulfilling summer working as a mechanic and adding,\u00a0\u201cI don\u2019t know why I need to go to college.\u201d\u00a0Farley has also talked about how he has deliberately structured his son\u2019s summers around hands-on trades work\u2014welding, fabricating, working with his hands.<\/p>\n When told that the story seems to be resonating, Farley said he wasn\u2019t surprised. \u201cThe job market\u2019s not easy for young college graduates,\u201d he told Fortune<\/em> this week. \u201cIf you\u2019re a parent of a college graduate, you\u2019re asking the same question that our household is\u2014what\u2019s going to become of our kids and their careers?\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s not wrong that the cultural tide is shifting. A\u00a0November 2025 NBC News poll\u00a0found that 63% of Americans now say a four-year degree is \u201cnot worth the cost\u201d\u2014up from 47% in 2017. Gen Z is acting on that skepticism: Between 2011 and 2023,\u00a0roughly 2 million fewer students enrolled\u00a0in four-year universities, and in the first quarter of 2024, Gen Z made up nearly 25% of all new hires in skilled trades. A\u00a0February 2026 survey\u00a0found 60% of Gen Zers plan to pursue skilled-trade work this year.<\/p>\n The personal anecdote comes as Farley has made the so-called \u201cessential economy\u201d\u2014the tradespeople, fabricators, electricians, and welders who keep the country running\u2014a central pillar of his tenure at Ford. On May 7, the company unveiled the 2027 Ford Super Duty Carhartt Special Edition, a co-branded work truck built in partnership with the 130-year-old Detroit workwear giant. It was less a product reveal than a celebration of the people who actually use the truck to run their businesses, bringing together some 300 essential economy workers and employees in Detroit.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not a pretend truck. It\u2019s not a show-off truck,\u201d Farley said. \u201cIt\u2019s an F-250 that people buy to go work. But I bet it\u2019ll wind up being a badge of honor for a lot of people who show up at the work site.\u201d<\/p>\n The truck is designed to feel, from the inside out, like wearing a Carhartt jacket. Duck canvas seat inserts, Carhartt Brown and Field Khaki color options, and dual-branded badging carry the collaboration\u2019s aesthetic throughout the cab. Under the hood, buyers can spec the truck with Ford\u2019s 6.7-liter Power Stroke diesel\u2014the most powerful diesel engine in its class\u2014or a high-output 7.3-liter gas V8. A range of Pro Power Onboard options, up to 4.0 kilowatts, lets workers run job-site tools directly from the bed.<\/p>\n Carhartt CEO Linda Hubbard, who joined Farley in talking to Fortune<\/em>, said the partnership is anything but a marketing exercise. \u201cFor Ford and Carhartt, this isn\u2019t a side initiative,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s really core to both of our companies and how we operate.\u201d She noted that Hamilton Carhartt called workers \u201cworld builders\u201d when he founded the company in the 1880s. \u201cHow do we get young people to think: yeah, that would be a great career for me, and something I\u2019d be proud of doing?\u201d<\/p>\n The origin story of their partnership is vintage Farley, an automotive marketing wizard since the 1990s. Several years ago, he took his daughter\u2014then just starting high school\u2014to the Carhartt store in downtown Detroit. He was struck not just by the apparel but by how Carhartt had consistently portrayed working-class America as aspirational. \u201cI came back to the company and said, \u2018Why aren\u2019t we doing a co-branded product with Carhartt?’\u201d When the opportunity eventually materialized, he was all-in. \u201cI\u2019ve never felt a more organic, natural partnership. We\u2019re both from Detroit. We\u2019ve both made it through wars and economic downturns and upturns. We have the same customers and the same respect for those customers.\u201d<\/p>\n The truck launch lands against a backdrop that Farley and Hubbard described with real urgency. The skilled-trade shortage\u2014the gap between the jobs America desperately needs filled and the workers available to fill them\u2014remains, in Farley\u2019s words, \u201cfull-blown.\u201d He placed the country in \u201cthe second or third inning\u201d of grappling with it seriously, noting that awareness has improved but solutions remain fragmented. \u201cSo many of the real problems are in small companies and small businesses that don\u2019t have the funding,\u201d Farley said. \u201cTrade school is often offered as an option, but it\u2019s extremely expensive. Not everyone can afford it.\u201d<\/p>\n Ford is living that tension internally. As of January, the company had\u00a05,000 open mechanic jobs paying roughly $120,000 annually\u2014positions, Farley says, for which he simply cannot find workers to fill.<\/p>\n The macro stakes are rising fast. As data centers proliferate across the country\u2014a flashpoint in midterm politics and a major driver of essential economy jobs\u2014Farley sees the debate quickly shifting from permitting and water use to something more fundamental: whether America has the workforce to build and power them. \u201cEven if the data centers get built, there\u2019s still a huge question mark about how the energy sector will support them,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd there\u2019s obviously going to be large shortages.\u201d<\/p>\n Farley said the skilled trades and essential economy debate will only intensify as this dynamic goes from the data-center boom to gridded energy shortages. \u201cIn our case, we\u2019re launching an energy storage business,\u201d Farley said, touching on the company\u2019s recently formed subsidiary, Ford Energy.<\/p>\n In December 2025, the company announced it was converting its\u00a0BlueOval SK plant in Glendale, Kentucky\u2014originally built to produce EV batteries in partnership with South Korea\u2019s SK On\u2014into a dedicated hub for large-scale battery energy storage systems, targeting data centers, utilities, and industrial customers. Ford is investing\u00a0$2 billion over two years\u00a0to scale the business to at least 20 gigawatt-hours of annual production by late 2027. It has also retooled its\u00a0Marshall, Michigan, plant\u00a0for residential energy storage cells.<\/p>\n The Kentucky conversion came alongside the layoffs of approximately 1,500 workers and a\u00a0$19.5 billion writedown. And in Marshall, workers are now learning lithium iron phosphate chemistry \u2014 skills most never anticipated needing when they took the job. \u201cWe are ourselves finding skilled trade shortages as we convert our automotive battery plants to energy storage battery plants in Kentucky and Michigan,\u201d Farley told Fortune<\/em>.<\/p>\n According to a\u00a0March 2026 labor market report, the data center industry faces a projected shortfall of up to 499,000 workers, with construction labor costs rising 8%\u201312% year-over-year. \u201cI think our story is just very similar to what\u2019s going to be happening across the country with linemen, electricians, plumbers,\u201d Farley said, \u201cIt won\u2019t be just for data centers, it\u2019ll be for transmission lines, off-grid energy sources. It\u2019s going to get a bigger debate, not a smaller debate.\u201d<\/p>\n Here\u2019s where Farley\u2019s argument runs into friction. The case for a four-year degree\u2014at least on pure economics\u2014remains stubborn.<\/p>\n The\u00a0College Board reported in April 2026\u00a0that full-time college graduates earn roughly 60% more than high school graduates, a premium that has held steady for decades. The\u00a0New York Fed reports median earnings\u00a0of $80,000 annually for bachelor\u2019s degree holders, compared with<\/span> $47,000 for high school diploma holders.\u00a0Georgetown\u2019s Center on Education and the Workforce\u00a0found that prime-age workers with a bachelor\u2019s degree earn 70% more, on average. Lifetime earnings for college graduates run, by most estimates, more than $1 million higher than for those without a degree.<\/p>\n There is also a career-stage dynamic that complicates the trades vs. college calculus. Skilled trades wages can be highly competitive early on \u2014 experienced welders and electricians routinely earn $55,000\u2013$80,000\u2014but the trajectory often plateaus. College graduates\u2019 earnings, by contrast, tend to accelerate significantly through their 30s and 40s. The story of who \u201cwins\u201d financially is heavily dependent on what happens after 35, not at 22.<\/p>\n Farley doesn\u2019t shy away from the nuance entirely. \u201cPeople are realizing that if you make all these sacrifices to pay for education for your kids,\u201d he said, \u201cat the end of it they\u2019re looking at student debt and a long runway to make it all make sense financially. And we\u2019re under more pressure for the medical care of our parents. There are just a lot more pressures on everyone\u2019s pocketbook.\u201d<\/p>\n For Farley, the macro argument and the personal one have become inseparable\u2014and the essential economy debate is no longer a niche workforce story. It is becoming a mainstream political and economic flashpoint, with figures ranging from Larry Fink to Jamie Dimon now publicly sounding the alarm about skilled-labor shortages threatening America\u2019s growth ambitions. The Ad Council is mobilizing a paid advertising campaign around it. Third-party data investment is growing.<\/p>\n Hubbard put it plainly: \u201cIt does seem that business is picking up the mantle and saying, \u2018Yeah, we need to move this forward.’\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Ford #CEO #Gen #son #choosing #handson #work #college<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Jim Farley has one of the most recognizable names in American business. But when it comes to the question millions of parents are quietly asking around the dinner table\u2014is college… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2083,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[426,369,1108,2218,2936,3761,1893,428,3762,3156,1105],"class_list":["post-2082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-careers","tag-ceo","tag-choosing","tag-college","tag-ford","tag-ford-motor","tag-gen","tag-gen-z","tag-handson","tag-son","tag-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2082","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2082"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2082\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2082"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2082"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gw.adampg777.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2082"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}America\u2019s truck for the essential economy<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/fortune.com\/img-assets\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/FORD.jpg?format=webp&w=1440&q=100\"\/)
<\/div>\n<\/figure>\nCrisis in the third inning<\/strong><\/h2>\n
The data is more complicated<\/strong><\/h2>\n