By Fraser Patterson, Founder and CEO of Skillit
For years, we have assumed America faces a labor shortage when what we actually face is a labor allocation problem.
The energy transition is driving sustained demand for skilled workers across clean energy, EV charging, grid modernization, battery plants, advanced manufacturing, and high-efficiency HVAC. This capital is already committed to long-duration infrastructure projects, and in many markets access to labor has become the gating factor determining whether projects move forward on time and at scale.
At the same time, specialization is increasing in value. Electricians trained in EV charging systems or grid-scale solar are scarce. HVAC technicians proficient in high-efficiency systems and heat pumps sit at the center of building electrification. These roles offer strong wages and advancement, and the energy transition is reinforcing their durability. For many young people, apprenticeship pathways represent one of the clearest routes to high-income careers without student debt.
Yet strong demand and attractive wages do not automatically produce a stable workforce.
Each year, roughly 500,000 people attempt to enter construction through apprenticeships, trade schools, CTE programs, helper roles, and entry-level jobs. Union apprenticeship programs routinely receive two to five times more applicants than available seats, and high school trade enrollment has remained stable or grown in many regions.
The problem is not motivation. It’s economics.
More than half leak out of the system before becoming economically productive skilled workers, not because they lack aptitude or ambition, but because the early path is fragile and economically unstable.
Becoming a skilled craft worker you see is the ultimate marshmallow test. Most skilled trades require three to five years to reach full productivity and during that period, employers cannot justify paying full wages before output arrives, while workers face higher physical demands, inconsistent hours, upfront costs for tools and certifications, transportation challenges, and income volatility. On paper, a first-year apprentice earns roughly $43,000 compared to about $29,000 in retail. In practice, upfront costs and instability erase that premium and push workers toward the easier short-term option.
Today’s system also treats early failure as terminal. One bad placement, a stalled project, or a temporary financial shock can push a worker out of the industry entirely. There is no mechanism to quickly reassign workers who land in the wrong role at the wrong time, and no way to buffer early economic risk. Each employer absorbs risk independently, and each worker absorbs failure personally.
That is where coordination becomes the real constraint. Skilled workers exist, and clearly demand exists. But the systems connecting them are fragmented across companies, regions, and outdated hiring processes that were never built for synchronized national buildouts. Labor moves more slowly than capital, and when visibility into skills and availability is limited, projects extend and costs rise.
The solution is not simply more workers. It is modern labor infrastructure. We need real-time visibility into skills and availability. We need faster reassignment when projects stall. We need hiring systems that reduce early-stage fragility and allocate workers across trades and regions with the same precision that capital allocates funding.
That is the gap we are focused on at Skillit. We began in construction because it sits at the center of this buildout. Our focus is building hiring infrastructure for the physical economy so that skilled labor is visible, searchable, and connectable across trades and regions at scale. The immediate priority is solving access. The next is expanding participation by reducing early-career fragility and making trade pathways more resilient so more workers become economically productive.
Longer term, this challenge extends beyond clean energy. As AI reshapes knowledge work, the physical economy becomes more strategic. Energy systems, infrastructure, manufacturing, housing, and data centers all depend on skilled labor. Supporting that future requires systems capable of allocating workers efficiently across industries and geographies.
If we close that gap, the energy transition accelerates. More importantly, we stop leaking half of the next generation of skilled workers before they reach productivity, and we unlock durable, well-paying careers at scale.
The energy transition is often framed as a technological shift. In practice, it is a workforce coordination challenge. The companies and countries that modernize how labor moves will determine how quickly this next industrial chapter unfolds.
Photo by Lukas Kloeppel: