In this YouTube video, Michael Girdley (Speaker A) offers his 18‑year‑old son practical career guidance for 2024, framed around five macro‑economic trends that will shape the U.S. labor market. The trends are: (1) accelerated globalization and offshoring enabled by post‑COVID remote work; (2) a re‑industrialization push that brings manufacturing back to the United States; (3) a demographic squeeze as Generation Z is the smallest cohort since WWII, tightening the labor pool; (4) the rapid emergence of AI and large‑language‑model software that will automate many knowledge‑based jobs; and (5) expanding U.S. government spending on infrastructure, defense, and other public projects. For each trend, Girdley recommends a career path he believes will thrive: (1) jobs tied to government contracts, which are insulated from offshoring and benefit from steady public spending; (2) mission‑critical, life‑or‑death fields such as healthcare, aviation engineering, and other safety‑critical roles that are unlikely to be outsourced; (3) entrepreneurship, which leverages new technologies but remains a human‑driven, risk‑taking endeavor; (4) hands‑on physical trades—construction, manufacturing, HVAC, etc.—that are in short supply and resistant to AI replacement; and (5) finance and wealth‑management, where trust and relationship‑building outweigh the capabilities of robo‑advisors. The tone is conversational, parent‑to‑child, mixing caution about market headwinds with optimism about sectors that will remain robust. The video ends with an invitation for viewers to comment on any disagreements or missing ideas.
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So right now is like a super turbulent time in the economy. Lots of stuff is changing and the stuff that's going on is going to impact careers by a lot. This is a video that, in my opinion, are the 5 careers that are worth pursuing today, given what's going on with the trends in the marketplace and in the world. I'm going to talk to you about the trends and then I'm going to talk to you about the careers and I'm going to tell you why I think what I think.
And then I would love to hear what you think.
To some extent, I'm doing this because my oldest son is turning 18 and we're starting to think about, well, what's right for him? In the end, he'll decide for himself. But look, As a parent, I can't help but look at this stuff. There are 5 super trends going on right now that are going to radically shape the workforce in the coming years. Number 1 is the globalization of the workforce. Offshoring and sending American jobs overseas is not a new thing. What is new is that post-COVID, American small businesses are totally comfortable hiring overseas, and that's because of 2 reasons.
Number 1, we all got really comfortable with remote work during the pandemic. Number 2, the job market has continued to stay incredibly tight. And when people can't hire and they need to run their small business and feed their family, they start doing what it takes, and sometimes that's hiring people overseas.
Number 2 is the reindustrialization of the United States.
Given everything going on in places like China and overseas and the difficulty of just moving stuff around, America has decided we want to build more stuff here.
So there's a reindustrialization of bringing industry, especially physical industry, back to North America and especially the United States. And you can see that in the government policies.
They are investing so much money to try to build more stuff here in the United States.
Number 3, the generation that's coming up, this generation called Generation Z, which is a bunch of young people, it is the smallest generation since World War II because they're the kids of my generation, Gen X. And we were the second smallest generation since World War II. We had the baby boomers and the millennials. But the thing is, the workforce is going to continue to be super tight in America. We just don't have that many young people showing up and ready to take on these jobs. Number 4 is the emergence of AI. So we're starting to see how the software that comes out of these large language models— well, what we're commonly calling AI— is starting to create massive headwinds in the job market. You're starting to see how more and more jobs are going to get replaced by software that can basically have a conversation with another person and solve problems. Now, are you going to trust that thing? Not quite sure, but for sure a lot of jobs are going to get replaced by this software called AI that we're starting to see now. And number 5 is the increasing size of U.S. government spend. And here's the reality: American politicians are going to keep spending more and more money on things like bridges, aircraft carriers, and it benefit for our population because they can borrowing it and they have no discipline. There isn't any sign that the government is going to stop spending money. So you can bet on it that, well, we're going to keep doing it in the future, at least as long as the rest of the world lets us do it. And you can see how that will impact the job market as well. The more money the government spends, the closer you want to be to that spigot of money because, well, if you have a job that is basically dependent upon it, there's a good chance you could go get a little bit of it. So based on these 5 trends, right, what can we do with this knowledge to figure out what jobs you should go after in 2024, in the coming years? Number 1, anything tied to government contracts has a bright future. I see things here in San Antonio and other markets where there are tons of programmers whose jobs would have been shifted offshore, except they're tied to government contractors and the people have no choice but to place those employees in the United States. The reality is the government is always gonna be spending money and they're always gonna do it with American products and American people. Heck, our local utility here refuses to buy any equipment except for American-made equipment, no matter how much it costs. And the reality is if you're tied to a government contract, and you're tired of the government spending money, that's a good job to look into. And wherever you are in that value chain, whether you're the direct person working for the government as a government employee, or you're somebody who services somebody who services the government, that's something with a bright future and a good career to lean into, in my opinion. Number 2, something with a bright future is anything involving life or death.
We're talking about how things like AI are coming or offshoring are coming. If something really important, like, is your airplane going to stay in the air, do you really want to push that engineering offshore? If something is like, hey, your Healthcare stuff, do you really want your doctor dialing in from the Philippines? Heck no, you don't want that. So anything that you're gonna be tied into making sure that people stay alive, and if people's jobs screw up, it can really like, well, affect people living or dying. Number 3, bright future has always been in the United States, entrepreneurship. With all of these tools happening, it's gonna be the same as it always has been. New technology comes in, things affect the whole workforce, but the entrepreneurs are still there creating things that their customers want. And AI is not gonna replace that because frankly, it's just really hard. You have to figure out and make bets that are just going to be your entire bankroll, like all of your money. And that's what entrepreneurs tend to do. They're taking on a lot of risk, and you're not going to be offshoring that to somebody overseas, and you're certainly not going to be trusting it to an AI anytime in the future. So entrepreneurship, just as it always been, is going to be— well, in my opinion as an entrepreneur— the best career in the United States to have, and frankly the most fun. But it's not going anywhere. Perfect one to have. Number 4: anything that touches physical things. Very good career to be in. Construction, manufacturing, HVAC maintenance. Like, you See, these careers are getting paid really well these days because there aren't that many people going after those jobs. They're hard and you can't have any other choice other than to try to dip into the small US labor pool to take care of these careers. AI isn't taking that stuff over, except there is something coming. You can start to see it. People are working on building humanoid robots. These are robots that are basically shaped and can do the things that a person can do, but they have an AI inside of them. Kind of scary, right?
Like, I'm not sure I want one of these things in my house, but like, eventually you could imagine one of those things running a classroom room or taking care of a kid, right?
Because it's a humanoid robot, or doing your dishes for you. That all sounds pretty good to me. So you definitely want to think about avoiding any job that maybe one of these humanoid robots will take. If you go and look, and we'll put up one of the videos of kind of these things happening right now, like the demos of these are really compelling. They are not that far away from being in our lives. Now, at what point will you trust it to change your baby's diaper? I think we're decades away from that. Again, mission-critical stuff, uh, ain't nobody outsourcing that to a humanoid robot. But a number of these things, like mowing your lawn, pretty good chance a robot's going to be doing that at point.
Number 5 career: finance and wealth management. And look, this is going to be one of those things that people are going to say like, oh, robo-advisors, like these robots that give you advice on where to put your money, like they'll take care of it, automated, AI will do the whole thing. And I think that fundamentally misunderstands how wealth management, which is the business of helping people invest their money and save for retirement, they fundamentally misunderstand how that market works. Those people who are wealth managers, they're not really putting together a ton of strategy to help you or me figure out which stocks to buy or that kind of stuff. They're actually in the trust business. Their whole job is making sure that you you, me, our spouses, and our families are all comfortable with the plan that we're putting together, and there's a trust there that I'm putting my whole nest egg with this person and it's going to be handled the right way. And so I think finance, wealth management, these are all careers that if you're a high-level thinker in this stuff, if you're good with human relationships with other people and you can sell, these have a great future around them. And I'm not worried about these jobs disappearing. Now, some of the lower-level stuff, or maybe they're assistants, that's something to worry about with AI. But in general, these are good careers to look at and something I would definitely do, uh, in 2024 and beyond. So that's it. So those are the 5 careers I would pursue in 2024.
Tell me where you think I'm wrong or if I missed one.
Let me know in the replies. Thanks. See you next time.
