‘It’s crazy they invented it’: Nate Bargatze on the bright future of skilled trades, the urgency of live experience, and the coming of AI

Nate Bargatze used to read water meters door to door. Now he sells out arenas, is building a $350 million theme park in Tennessee, and Ford wants him talking up skilled trades to young people who might never have heard that old-school jobs can come with benefits and a path upward.

That pitch fits Bargatze’s own story. He didn’t go to college, and he says the meter-reading job was real work, not a punchline. It gave him the kind of stability he thinks trade school can still offer: a job you can grow with, depend on, and build a career around. If comedy hadn’t worked out, he said, he would have stayed in that world.

Ford’s bet is bigger than one spokesman. The Alliance for America’s Skilled Trades, created by Ford, BlackRock, Google, and Carhartt, estimates the U.S. will need 1.7 million skilled-trades openings filled each year through 2035. The group says training is only supplying about 55 workers for every 100 needed, and nearly one-quarter of the skilled-trades workforce is already 55 or older. Ford itself has promised $300 million in 2026 toward skilled-trades training and the broader essential economy.

Bargatze’s own career is a tidy argument for doing things in person. He says he learned from Marc Maron, starting with a 2012 podcast recorded in a garage and later opening shows on the road. That slow build turned into a record-setting tour that sold about 2.016 million tickets in August and made him Pollstar’s highest-grossing stand-up comic of 2025, with $77.5 million in reported ticket sales.

And he thinks the same logic now applies to work and entertainment. AI, in his view, can make information easier to get and help people who never liked school, but it can’t replace the need for electricians, repair workers, and everyone else who has to show up and do the physical part. It also won’t satisfy the growing appetite for things a phone can’t fake: family outings, escape rooms, horses, and whatever else requires actual presence.