Thumbtack Says AI Is Pushing Gen Z Toward the Trades. Nearly 3 in 4 Pros Still Turn Away Work.

What changed — September 16, 2026

The labor shortage story is changing from “nobody wants the trades” to “can contractors convert interest into capacity?”

What contractors should know

• Thumbtack says nearly half of surveyed Gen Z respondents are learning or seriously considering a skilled trade.
• Thirty percent of Gen Z respondents said AI has made them more interested in skilled trades; four in five said AI will eliminate many traditional entry-level jobs.
• Among pros with less than two years in a trade, 38% said they previously worked in a corporate or white-collar career and 26% said burnout or a career reset helped drive the change.
• Thirty-five percent of surveyed pros said they regularly use AI in their business; that rises to 52% among pros with less than two years in the trade.
• Nearly three-quarters of surveyed pros said they turned away work in the past year, often because of project fit or profitability—not simply because the phone stopped ringing.
• BLS currently projects about 72,700 electrician openings, 42,000 plumber/pipefitter/steamfitter openings and 40,600 HVAC technician openings per year on average over 2025–2035.
• A larger applicant pool only creates value if the contractor can train, supervise, retain and dispatch new workers profitably.

The workforce shift in eight numbers

Gen Z sample

1,000

U.S. respondents ages 16–30 surveyed July 20–21, 2026.

AI increased trade interest

30%

Share of Gen Z respondents saying AI made them more interested in the trades.

Career strategy changed

92%

Share reporting at least one career-plan change in response to the job market.

Pro sample

1,495

Thumbtack pros surveyed June 17 through July 17, including partial responses.

New pros from white collar

38%

Among pros with less than two years in the trade.

Pros using AI regularly

35%

Most commonly for marketing, customer communication and research.

New pros using AI

52%

Among pros with less than two years in the trades.

Pros turning away work

~3 in 4

Reported in the past year; project fit and profitability were common reasons.

The appeal of the trades in an AI-heavy labor market is intuitive. A homeowner still needs a person to troubleshoot a no-heat call, replace a panel, diagnose a leaking water line or commission a new system. The physical environment, code requirements, safety risk and customer interaction make those jobs fundamentally different from many entry-level desk tasks.

But describing the trades as “AI-proof” can hide the more important business transition. Thumbtack’s own pro survey suggests technology adoption is already part of the new workforce. Thirty-five percent of respondents said they regularly use AI in their business, including 52% of pros with less than two years in the trade and more than one-quarter of pros with 20 years or more of experience.

That points toward a hybrid future: the field work remains physical while more of the administrative layer becomes assisted. A technician may use AI to summarize a job history, draft a customer explanation, research equipment documentation or prepare follow-up notes. The office may use it to triage leads, recover missed calls, draft estimates or surface aging opportunities.

The competitive question is not whether the wrench disappears. It is whether a contractor can remove enough low-value friction around the wrench that a scarce technician produces more useful work in a day.

Federal labor data gives the survey a useful reality check. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects 72,700 electrician openings per year on average from 2025 through 2035, 42,000 annual openings for plumbers, pipefitters and steamfitters, and 40,600 annual openings for HVAC mechanics and installers. Added together, those three categories represent about 155,300 openings per year.

Those openings are not all new jobs. BLS explicitly says many are replacement needs created when workers transfer occupations or leave the labor force, including retirement. That distinction matters because contractors are not only staffing growth. They are replacing accumulated experience.

The growth rates remain healthy as well: BLS projects electrician employment to grow 9% over the decade, plumbing/pipefitting/steamfitting 7%, and HVAC 11%, compared with 3% for all occupations. Median May 2025 wages were $63,190 for electricians, $63,800 for plumbers/pipefitters/steamfitters and $61,010 for HVAC technicians.

The recruiting opportunity is therefore real, but the replacement burden is real too. A business can hire five apprentices and still lose productive capacity if two experienced journeymen retire without transferring diagnostic judgment, customer skills and supervisory capacity.

BLS outlook for three core contractor occupations

One of the most operator-relevant findings in Thumbtack’s release is that nearly three-quarters of pros reported turning away work in the previous year. Thumbtack says project fit and profitability were common reasons.

That complicates the simplistic labor-shortage narrative. A contractor can be “busy” and still reject demand because the job is too small, too far away, badly scoped, underpriced, outside the company’s preferred equipment or service profile, or likely to consume capacity that could earn a better return elsewhere.

This is why adding people without improving operating discipline can fail. New technicians need enough profitable work in a tight service radius, the right skill mix, clear price-book authority and supervision that does not pull a senior technician off billable work for half the day.

The best recruiting plan is therefore connected to the demand plan. Owners should know what work they want more of, what work they routinely decline, what gross profit a productive field employee must generate, and which skill levels are truly constraining capacity before adding headcount.

Thumbtack says 38% of pros with less than two years in the industry previously worked in a corporate or white-collar career, while 26% said they entered the trades after burnout or a desire for a career reset.

That applicant is different from the stereotypical 18-year-old helper. A career switcher may bring customer communication, project management, sales, software literacy or management experience while starting from zero on technical hours. A contractor that evaluates only wrench skills may miss transferable value; a contractor that ignores the technical learning curve may set the person up to fail.

The recruiting message should reflect that reality. Show the training path, expected wage progression, licensing milestones, typical field day, physical demands and the time required to become independently productive. “You can make six figures” is a weak promise if the business cannot explain the steps between day one and journey-level competence.

Thumbtack also ranked local markets using its own marketplace data from January 1 through July 28. The index combines professional supply, year-over-year supply growth, project requests per available pro, projects per capita and demand growth. Washington, D.C. ranked first, followed by Charlotte, Atlanta, Raleigh-Durham and Baltimore. Chicago, West Palm Beach, Austin, Seattle and Dallas rounded out the top ten.

That is a Thumbtack marketplace index, not a government ranking of wages, job openings or contractor profitability. It is still useful directionally because it reinforces a point national labor averages can hide: a recruiting program is local. An owner needs to understand the wage floor, training capacity, licensing constraints, commute radius, local project mix and competitive employers in the exact market where the truck must be staffed.

Thumbtack’s 10 markets best positioned for skilled-trade labor supply and demand

A practical workforce checklist

• Write the first 24 months of the career path before recruiting: starting role, training milestones, wage steps, expected field responsibilities and licensing hours.
• Separate recruiting for entry-level apprentices from recruiting for career switchers; the transferable skills and onboarding needs are different.
• Measure supervisor capacity. Every apprentice requires real coaching time, and adding trainees faster than the company can teach them can reduce output.
• Show modern work. Recruiting content should feature diagnostic tools, tablets, controls, heat pumps, generators, EV equipment, financing, customer communication and the technology technicians actually use.
• Track time-to-productivity by cohort instead of celebrating raw hires. Measure when a new employee can perform specific work safely and profitably with less supervision.
• Audit the jobs you decline. If the business turns away work, classify why: skill mismatch, geography, price, schedule, equipment, financing, permit complexity or low expected gross profit.
• Build retention into recruiting. A strong applicant funnel is wasted if technicians cannot see the next credential, pay step, role or leadership path.

The Dispatch takeaway

FAQ

Methodology

Dispatch treated Thumbtack’s September 16 release as company-sponsored survey research rather than official labor-market data and preserved the release’s methodology caveats. Thumbtack’s Gen Z sample included 1,000 U.S. respondents ages 16–30 surveyed July 20–21, 2026 by DKC Analytics using Pollfish; sampling was calibrated to population demographics, no post-stratification was applied, and the stated margin of error was 3.1 percentage points. Thumbtack’s pro survey included 1,495 respondents (1,037 complete and 458 partial responses) surveyed June 17–July 17 through Thumbtack’s internal email list, with no post-stratification. Its city ranking used Thumbtack marketplace supply and consumer-request data from January 1 through July 28. Dispatch independently checked current BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook pages, updated August 27, 2026, for employment, wage, growth and annual-opening figures. The combined ~155,300 annual openings figure is Dispatch arithmetic adding BLS’s 72,700 electricians, 42,000 plumbers/pipefitters/steamfitters and 40,600 HVAC openings; it is not a Thumbtack estimate and does not represent net new jobs.