Mike Feinberg believes in the Star Trek future almost without reservation: robots building homes, machines minding children, artificial intelligence doing much of what white-collar workers do today. He just doesn’t think that future arrives in time to help the welders and electricians WorkTexas is training right now.
“Eventually we’re going to live in the Star Trek era, and AI and technology are going to probably solve this for us,” he has said. “Not in our lifetime, though. And so that’s why there’s a need to do this, to bridge ourselves to Star Trek.”
Why Automation Skips the Job Site
A joint research effort published in April 2026 by credit insurer Coface and the Observatoire des Emplois Menaces et Emergents mapped automation risk across 923 occupations worldwide. Skilled trades and hands-on manual work landed below a 10% exposure threshold. Legal and financial jobs came in at 27%. Engineering and computational roles hit 29%. An electrician bending conduit and an HVAC technician diagnosing a failing compressor are doing work a language model cannot touch. The analyst who wrote that report may not be so lucky.
WorkTexas, the Houston nonprofit Feinberg co-founded in 2020 with Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale and Vanessa Ramirez, teaches more than a dozen trades, from welding and electrical work to plumbing and commercial truck driving, in courses that run about 11 weeks. More than 100 employer partners help build the curriculum, a track record laid out on his TXSVF biography page.
The Numbers Behind Mike Feinberg’s Argument
They’re getting harder to argue with. JLL projects that 2.1 million skilled trades positions could sit unfilled nationally by 2030, with as much as $1 trillion in annual economic losses attached. More than one in five U.S. construction workers is already past 55, and for every five who retire, roughly two replacements show up. Electrician employment is projected to grow 9.5% through 2034, roughly triple the national average for all occupations. Skilled labor pay climbed more than 20% between 2020 and 2024, according to McKinsey.
Feinberg has argued for years that pushing vocational education out of high schools was a mistake with real financial consequences for a generation of students who took on debt without landing degrees that paid off. Jacob Martinez is one data point behind that argument. He finished a 12-week HVAC course through WorkTexas in 2022 and now earns $60,000 a year servicing the Houston Astros’ ballpark.
Feinberg doesn’t dismiss what AI will eventually do to the trades, too. He just thinks the timeline gives WorkTexas graduates a real head start, an idea his online shop sells, quite literally, alongside his old KIPP mantra: work hard, be nice.
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