This is how AI can revive America’s middle class

America is grappling with a wealth inequality problem. The top 1% of U.S. earners control more wealth today than the nation’s entire middle class, according to U.S. Federal Reserve data. America’s middle class, which once represented a wide majority of U.S. adults, has steadily contracted over the past five decades. Pew Research Center data found that the proportion of America’s middle-class households decreased from 61% in 1971 to 51% in 2023—a shift that has contributed to significant economic polarization.

The globalization of the U.S. economy is a significant driver of this wealth gap. According to the Economic Policy Institute, globalization has eliminated more than five million U.S. manufacturing jobs and 70,000 factories. This was exacerbated by the increased demand for highly skilled workers, creating a disproportionate playing field that has since left multiple generations of America’s middle-class families struggling to find financial prosperity.

Pittsburgh, for example, was among the U.S. cities hardest hit by globalization. Once a Rust Belt powerhouse of steel production, it lost roughly 100,000 manufacturing jobs during the period, and its population dropped by nearly half from its peak in the 1950s.

However, Pittsburgh turned its fortunes around by leveraging its strengths and embracing new industries. The city’s transformation began in the 1990s and accelerated in the 2000s, driven by scaled investments in healthcare and technology coupled with its preexisting blue-collar work ethic. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh became centers for research and innovation, particularly in fields like robotics, artificial intelligence (AI), and biomedical engineering. These institutions, forward-thinking local government policies, and private sector commitments helped attract new organizations and startups to the area.

Today, Pittsburgh is recognized as a technology innovation hub, home to CMU’s globally renowned Robotics Institute and fielding offices for major enterprises like Google, Uber, Meta, Duolingo, and numerous startups. The city has also developed a strong presence in advanced manufacturing, financial technology, and healthcare innovation. This transformation has diversified Pittsburgh’s economy, created new jobs, attracted young professionals, and reversed the population decline. According to a 2023 labor readiness study cited by the Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh’s labor force ranks fifth among large metro cities in the “momentum” category, recognizing growth in the number of technology workers and demand for advanced skills.

Pittsburgh’s revitalization from steel to silicon is a microcosm of a major labor market opportunity on the horizon amid the rise of AI. Advancements in AI are poised to profoundly reshape the U.S. workforce in the coming decades.

While concerns about AI displacing human workers are valid, it also presents massive potential to catalyze the creation of a wide array of new high-quality job opportunities particularly for those with trade-based, middle-class backgrounds hindered by the ripple effects of globalization.

The AI revolution, coupled with targeted public-private sector initiatives into accessible training and education, could expand access to sustainable, well-paying careers facilitating the development, deployment, and maintenance of AI-enabled technologies.

Creating a new hierarchy of skills for America’s middle class

As AI advancement accelerates, it will usher in a new hierarchy of skills that creates a multilevel and meritocracy-driven ecosystem of expertise across the technology labor force that facilitates upward and lateral mobility. Envision it as a pyramid. At the top are creative visionaries who use their pure intellectual genius to shape the intersection of advanced technology and mankind—like how Steve Jobs and Bill Gates did during the first tech revolution, and how Sam Altman, Mira Murati, Satya Nadella, and Tim Cook currently are today.

Then come the architects employed by those visionaries, a special class of knowledge management experts who will conceive architectures and develop frameworks representing knowledge in its multidimensional forms. With unrivaled expertise in advanced fields like computational linguistics and epistemology, they’ll serve as the designers of revolutionary AI road maps and ideate for impact across high-value industries like semiconductor manufacturing and data center computing.

On the next level, software engineers can build and design advanced AI systems that are ideated by the top of the pyramid. They will take the architect’s design and engineer it into concrete blueprints, installing the AI system’s plumbing, HVAC units, and electrical wiring to ensure it can perform high-dimensional mathematical computations to address unique subsets of business problems.

Below that is where the job production multiplies exponentially. A large portion of the population independent of prior educational or income backgrounds can reinvent themselves by learning practical, high-demand AI vocational skills that democratize historically education-specific roles, responsibilities, and workflows.

Even if private university tuition was unaffordable, they can still forge a healthy career with upward mobility through GenAI prompting, enabling them to perform functions along the AI pathway and help execute the architect’s vision. The steelworkers of yesteryear are the new coders and operators inside billion-dollar data centers focusing on quality control and ensuring systems operate according to their specifications.

Consider these the U.S. factory jobs of the future, which could help offset the detrimental impact of globalization by addressing societal challenges such as wealth inequality, economic instability, and DEI through expanded employment accessibility through onshoring this next wave of technology innovation.

Supporting billion-dollar Big Tech investments

The benefits of this explosion in job creation are twofold. In addition to expanded employment accessibility for America’s middle class, it would offer critical human capital support for America’s massive investments in Big Tech, AI, and semiconductor manufacturing.

In March, for example, Microsoft and OpenAI announced plans for a $100 billion data center project to fuel the development of its “Stargate” supercomputer set to launch in 2028. Amazon, Google, Apple, and IBM also have similar initiatives underway. These data centers, unprecedented in size, scope, and computing power, will need tens of thousands of employees and a steady supply of onshore-produced semiconductors to operate effectively.

The CHIPS Act’s $50 billion investment into the U.S. semiconductor industry was hindered by a talent shortage. Without a robust talent pipeline of AI-trained workers (a pipeline that will drive vocational GenAI and support skill-set training and educational initiatives), America will not be capable of producing enough chips to fuel the data centers that are powering the country’s position in the global AI arms race.

This is where the U.S. government, in conjunction with the private sector, will need to serve as a proper catalyst by enabling affordable and accessible AI educational opportunities. Microsoft is investing $3.3 billion into building a data hub in Wisconsin that aims to train employees and manufacturers on the best ways to utilize AI. As part of the investment, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Connected Systems Institute will house the nation’s first manufacturing-focused AI Co-Innovation Lab. The initiative is projected to create 2,300 union construction jobs and 2,000 permanent data center jobs over time.

Google also announced in April a new $75 million fund to provide AI workforce training through a $49 online course. The company promised to teach one million Americans AI skills by providing grants to partner organizations like Goodwill and Miami Dade College, which will offer the course for free. Moving forward, more targeted investments in public-private partnerships will be critical to leveraging AI to empower the future workforce.

Contrary to popular opinion, the rise of AI isn’t a doomsday scenario for the U.S. labor market. It presents a unique opportunity to address some of the longstanding societal challenges driving instability across America and offering wider pathways to prosperity for a large swath of the population that faces an uphill climb to an honest living. By tapping into this newfound hierarchy of skilled workers, we can also strengthen America’s middle class and facilitate the future of AI advancement across industries.