Mike Feinberg has a name for the future he thinks is coming: the Star Trek era. Robots will build our homes. Smart machines will care for our children. Artificial intelligence will handle much of what white-collar workers do today. He believes all of that, genuinely.
He just doesn't think it's happening in time to help the people 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," Feinberg said. "Not in our lifetime, though. And so that's why there's a need to do this, to bridge ourselves to Star Trek."
That framing, offered well before AI displacement became a front-page crisis, looks prescient in 2026. White-collar layoffs tied to automation have accelerated. Tech sector job losses in the U.S. reached 45,000 in just the first three months of this year. Meanwhile, demand for the electricians, HVAC technicians, plumbers, and construction workers that WorkTexas trains has never been higher, and the pipeline supplying them has never been thinner.
Why Mike Feinberg's Model Targets the Jobs Automation Can't Touch
A joint April 2026 research report from credit insurer Coface and the Observatoire des Emplois Menaces et Emergents mapped automation exposure across 923 occupations in more than 30 countries. Skilled trades and in-person manual services sat below a 10% automation exposure threshold. Legal and financial occupations came in at 27%. Engineering and computational roles were at 29%.
Put plainly: the electrician bending conduit and the HVAC technician diagnosing a failing compressor are doing work that AI cannot replicate. The analyst writing the report about them may have a harder time saying the same.
WorkTexas, the Houston-based trades training nonprofit Mike Feinberg co-founded in 2020 alongside businessman Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale and Vanessa Ramirez, offers free or low-cost instruction in more than a dozen trade areas, from welding and electrical work to plumbing, building maintenance, commercial truck driving, and culinary skills. Courses run about 11 weeks. More than 100 employer partners help shape the curriculum and hire graduates.
Feinberg has spent years arguing that trades careers aren't a consolation prize for students who couldn't hack it academically. That argument has moved from contrarian to consensus faster than almost anyone anticipated.
"We basically shamed vo-tech out of the high schools, which was a terrible mistake," he has said. "We told kids and parents that if you want to be successful in this world, you have to go to college. In the '90s, it was a car loan. Now it's a home mortgage."
The Numbers Behind Mike Feinberg's Argument
The economic case has sharpened considerably. JLL, the global commercial real estate services firm, published research in April 2026 projecting that 2.1 million skilled trades positions could go unfilled by 2030, with potential annual economic losses reaching $1 trillion. More than one in five U.S. construction workers is currently over 55. For every five tradespeople who retire, roughly two replacements enter the workforce.
Electrician employment is projected to grow 9.5% through 2034, triple the national average for all occupations. HVAC technician roles are projected to grow at 8.1% over the same period. At the same time, enrollment in trades-related majors at community colleges has climbed 12% over the past five years, suggesting that perception among younger workers is beginning to shift.
Wages have followed demand. Skilled labor compensation in the U.S. rose more than 20% between early 2020 and 2024, according to McKinsey research. WorkTexas reports that adults who have been employed for a year or more after completing the program earn an average of $23 per hour. Jacob Martinez, who completed a 12-week HVAC course through WorkTexas in 2022, now earns $60,000 annually as an HVAC technician for the Houston Astros at Daikin Park.
Feinberg doesn't dismiss the disruption AI will eventually bring to every sector, including the trades. Digital literacy is already part of the WorkTexas experience, and he acknowledges that tradespeople of the future will need to operate alongside increasingly sophisticated tools. But the timeline matters.
"Work hard, be nice" was the foundational mantra Feinberg carried from his KIPP years into WorkTexas. He applies it to the AI question, too, in his way: prepare people for the economy that exists right now, not the one that might arrive in a generation. For the workers going through WorkTexas today, the Star Trek era can wait.
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