Ford has tapped comedian Nate Bargatze, who once read water meters door to door, to make the case for skilled trades at a time when employers say the U.S. does not have enough electricians, technicians, maintenance workers, welders and other workers who keep the physical economy moving.
Bargatze told Fortune that the job came with benefits and a career path. He said trade school was the kind of option he would have chosen if comedy had not worked out.
The backdrop is a labor squeeze that Ford and its partners say is already visible. The Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, created by Ford, BlackRock, Google and Carhartt, estimates the country will need to fill 1.7 million skilled-trades openings each year through 2035. The coalition said existing training pathways are supplying roughly 55 workers for every 100 needed.
The group says the shortfall is being shaped by retirements, uneven training capacity and investment in infrastructure, manufacturing, energy and housing. It also says nearly one-quarter of the skilled-trades workforce is 55 or older, compared with 11% who are younger than 25.
Ford has committed $300 million in 2026 toward skilled-trades training and the essential economy, which it defines as manufacturing, construction, energy, public services, transportation and logistics. Jim Farley, Ford’s chief executive, has called skilled trades 'the backbone' of the American Dream and said the shortage is too large and too geographically uneven for any one company or state to handle alone.
Bargatze said the rise of AI could make skilled work more valuable. He said the technology could give people who struggled in traditional schooling a new way to learn, while also opening a new economy built around more human experiences, including comedy.
The market has already voted on the value of that message. Bargatze’s Big Dumb Eyes World Tour sold about 2.016 million tickets in August, setting a Guinness World Records mark for the most tickets sold by a stand-up comedy tour. Pollstar named him the highest-grossing stand-up comic of 2025, with $77.5 million reported in ticket sales, and he is planning a $350 million theme park in Tennessee.
Capital rewards clear rules and real productivity. Ford is betting that the next wave of growth will not come only from code or credentials, but from people who can build, repair and keep the economy running. In an AI era, that is not nostalgia. It is leverage.
