In this articleTFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTFrom the Dayton, Ohio, suburbs to boardrooms in Dallas, the employees fueling AT&T’s next wave of growth aren’t fresh-faced college graduates with expensive four-year degrees. They’re skilled, blue-collar workers ready to get their hands dirty — and AT&T can’t find enough of them. “We need people who know how to actually work with electricity. We need people who understand photonics. We need people who can go into folks’ homes and connect this infrastructure to make it work right,” AT&T CEO John Stankey told CNBC during a recent interview from the company’s Dallas headquarters. “We find that we’ve got to go out and find them, train them, and incent them to come in,” he said. “It’s not like we’re growing them on trees in the United States.” AT&T’s dilemma — hunting for blue-collar workers at a time when a record number of college students are projected to graduate this spring — underscores the palpable crisis facing new degree holders as the first wave of the AI revolution hits the U.S. economy. For much of the postwar era, the American bargain was clear: Go to college, get a degree and claim your place in the middle class. As factories gave way to offices and the U.S. economy increasingly rewarded credentials over physical labor, a four-year diploma became one of the clearest symbols of upward mobility. But as AI spreads across corporate America and begins to absorb the entry-level work that once gave graduates their start, that promise is beginning to fracture.While the rapid spread of AI has not yet led to broad layoffs and empty offices, many new graduates, especially those in AI-exposed industries, are learning their degrees may no longer guarantee the opportunities they once did. John Stankey, Chairman and CEO at AT&T, speaking at CNBC’s Invest In America Forum in Washington, D.C. on April 15th, 2026.Aaron Clamage | CNBCMeanwhile, as AI implementation spreads and CEOs find they can do more with less labor, hiring is slowing. The downturn has hit hardest the workers with little real-world experience and those in industries expected to be most vulnerable to AI replacement, such as marketing, legal, accounting, human resources and IT.If the trend continues, AI could reorder the U.S. workforce and global economy, redrawing the map of opportunity in ways that even some leading economists and technologists say they are only beginning to understand.”Is the American Dream going away because of AI?… I think the fears are all very valid,” said May Hu, a 26-year-old tech consultant turned social media influencer who said she was laid off from Deloitte last year for what she described as nonperformance reasons. “I pursued college because… I think [for] most people who want to be working professionals … college is the route,” she continued. “That’s starting to change now.”Like any technological revolution, the AI boom is expected to create new types of work. But, in …
