John Stankey

Hi, it’s Kevin O’Connor from This Old House. This is Work in Progress. Today, John Stankey, Chairman and CEO of AT&T. Over the next five years, AT&T plans to invest a quarter trillion dollars in America’s communications infrastructure. But you can’t build a network from an office. Somebody has to climb the pole, splice the fiber and bring it to your door.

He shares where those people come from and what it takes to train them.

John, welcome. Thank you very much for joining us.

JOHN: Kevin, it’s great to be with you today on a topic I’m really excited about.

KEVIN: I am struck by how large of an employer you are, and in particular, in the trades. Tell me about that. I’d love to hear your sort of take on the landscape out there and why it’s so important to you and your company.

JOHN: I think sometimes people don’t realize, the way I like to refer to our company is we’re a bit manufacturer, and that’s very physical work. It’s literally like building the railroad system, only we’re laying fiber instead of tracks. So, that ends up driving a whole lot of trenching and rodding and roping, and people actually attaching fiber to poles and doing splicing and getting inside homes, get into multi-dwelling units and apartment buildings and run fiber.

That’s very craft oriented. It requires you to have a lot of fundamental skills to get that done, and that’s the lifeblood of what we need in terms of labor to make our business hum.

KEVIN: So, John, you’re one of the largest employers of skilled tradespeople in America. What does that demand for labor look like right now compared to, say, five years ago, 10 years ago?

What, what’s the trend line?

JOHN: Ten years ago, we weren’t really thinking a whole lot about how do we bring in skilled tradespeople. We were pretty comfortable with how we did intake. Frankly, the amount of investment we were making was probably a little bit lower, but now with the AI boom, investment’s up. So, just like you hear about data centers getting built, they all have to be connected.

As a result of that, we’ve got a significant more amount of labor. We rely on those construction trades in the local communities. Those are the folks that are typically coming in and putting infrastructure in that we then come behind and place our electronics. And so it’s, it’s a challenge right now, the combination of getting the skilled labor on the contractor side to support us, as well as what we need to do our more technical work on top of that.

And we’ve, we’ve been hiring between 3,000 to 3,500 folks a year to do more of that technical fiber work, and we’re having to work real hard to find the talent.

KEVIN: And is that enough? You know, could you use 4,000 or 6,000? Are you limited by the supply out there, or are you sort of hitting your numbers?

JOHN: It’s about right for our business, but if you look across the industry right now and you look at the forecasts for all telecommunications, probably by 2032, you’re looking at something just short of 200,000 people that need to be hired in. So, when you get out beyond AT&T, there’s clearly needs much broader.

We’re working harder than we ever have, partnering with community colleges to step up some of our intake in from the military. We’ve had to beef up our own internal programs to close the gaps. We’re kind of getting our, our feet about us.

KEVIN: What do you think’s at stake if we don’t build those training pipelines, if we don’t fill those jobs? What’s at stake for our economy and for our country?

JOHN: We all know there’s a huge building boom going on trying to bring the next foundational technology of AI out, and all those data centers have to be connected. And AT&T, that’s what we do, is we make sure that the infrastructure’s there to be connected.

So, what’s at stake is if we don’t do that well, we’re obviously going to not have the kind of capacity we need to facilitate AI. But I think it even goes a step beyond that. I will give you an example. We’re involved in building a new office building and an administrative complex for our company, and when we look at that project, our biggest risk in delivering it and delivering it in a timely fashion is really getting our hands on skilled electrical trades and HVAC trades.

As a society, if we want to keep growing, we really need to address this and step up to it.

KEVIN: You’ve been outspoken on this issue about maybe a four-year college degree isn’t the only path for everybody. We’ve certainly had that discussion. How do you see that? How do you frame it? And what do you think the trajectory is for the future?

JOHN: My point of view is, you know, look, there’s other countries around the globe that clearly understand that we don’t distinguish between good work and bad work. All work is something that brings dignity and integrity to somebody’s life, and we’re all suited to do different things. And so a country that understands that some people are better suited to possibly do more physical work or work with their hands and builds more active apprenticeship programs, does a better job of skill training, and doesn’t just index that the only place to go and, and learn how to have a good life is college.

There’s other people who love to be outdoors. They like to work with their hands. They like physical aspects, and that’s just as valid as somebody who does thought work in a white-collar administrative complex. And I think as a society, we need to respect that. I think that’s just what we have to look at and maybe not stigmatize one work over another but be balanced in how we think about it.

KEVIN: I’ve heard that your company has committed $250 billion to increasing connectivity and all the work that goes into that. Tell us about that and what portion of it goes to bringing people into the trades, training them, and getting them to be working for you.

JOHN: Yeah, the vast majority of that investment is labor-driven in actually building the infrastructure or installing services in people’s homes.

There’s certainly capital equipment that we have to buy that those individuals are responsible for deploying and operating and turning up. A lot of it gets down to actually having to physically have individuals that can execute on that work. There’s huge amount of investment to ultimately build the infrastructure that connects everybody to gain access to AI.

But the point is that when that level of investment is going on, there’s a lot of different paths that are opened up by it, and skilled trades being probably the most significant path overall.

KEVIN: Give me a sense of what that path looks like for a young person who joins AT&T and decides that they want to work with their hands. What’s the process and the path for them?

JOHN: We have multiple tiers inside of our company in how somebody comes in and works in our more skilled workforce. We tend to have particular positions that are the intake positions, where somebody enters in with a basic set of skills that maybe they picked up from outside or that we train initially.

Those typically are the jobs that are the customer-facing jobs that start out doing some of the basic delivery work for customers and businesses that require broadband services. Within that job discipline, we have ways for them to gain additional levels of competency that increase their pay over time as they do that and increase their skill set.

And then ultimately, we have many of these individuals that without, you know, a college degree or education, they become the new supervisors of the individuals that were doing the work that they once did when they entered into the business. And so there’s a very nice continuum for those that are motivated.

If somebody comes in with some basic capability, they want to contribute to the cause of the company, and they’re committed to the enterprise, things will probably work out pretty well for them.

KEVIN: Obviously, they are earning while they are learning through those programs. I’m curious what that does to retention.

JOHN: You know, generally speaking, if you look across most AT&T disciplines, our churn compared to industry is always at the top of the class. It’s usually the best there is in any particular work function, and I think some of that is, first of all, it’s a great place to work. We hope the environment is such that people enjoy what they do.

We think our pay is incredibly competitive. We have very complementary benefits packages. But we also work on trying to make sure the individual can pick up better skills. We offer certification programs. We allow for tuition reimbursement. We do training that’s rigorous within the context of the jobs that people have.

And I think when individuals see that level of support coming in their career, they know that they’re building a foundation that’s really important for them. And as long as they’re feeling good about the work they’re doing at AT&T, that’s great. They stay, and that’s why we have low employee turnover. But at the same time, they also know they’ve picked up some skills and capabilities that are probably portable elsewhere into other businesses if they decide to, you know, test their luck in a, in another endeavor.

So, I think it all works as a really healthy system, and, uh, we feel pretty good about the life cycle of how an employee works at AT&T.

KEVIN: How is AI changing the type of work at AT&T, and what does it mean for the future of these jobs and for your industry?

JOHN: A lot of it started with video conferencing during the pandemic, which was very upstream intensive. But AI in particular is much more chatty, sending information back up into the network, and the speed at which that roundtrip needs to be made is a really important element of that service experience. And the best way to deal with that is through fiber. And so, all this fiber infrastructure that’s being built is to allow for AI and the technology.

Inferencing, it’s putting a tremendous amount of requirements, not just on bandwidth in general, but upstream bandwidth in particular. And so this dynamic is what’s really driving this whole cycle of employment and need for skilled trades. That means buildings need to be built that require cooling and electricity.

That puts another load on the technical skills that are necessary. So, it’s this big virtuous cycle overall that’s driving that need for the nearly 200,000 new fiber and technical workers that are probably going to be required in telecommunications by 2032.

KEVIN: If you get this right, if we as a country get this right, what does it look like?

JOHN: Well, first of all, I think we would culturally be sitting around and, and saying as a society, we value work, and we value all work that brings dignity. Secondly, I would say we’re not having this conversation that we’re having right now, that there’s a shortage of individuals that are great electricians, great HVAC repair folks, people who know how to work with fiber and know data communications.

We’ve managed to match the workforce to the opportunity. And third, there’ll be a whole bunch of people that are reflecting on the fact that they were part of the making of what is a significant shift in the economic structure of our country, and they were part of building the capabilities that made that happen, and they have found a set of skills and capabilities that allow them to carry forward in an effective fashion in that new economy and that new approach that keeps them fully engaged and feeling good about their work.

KEVIN: John, as you probably know, at This Old House, we value work. We love building things. I join you in that vision of the future, and I thank you for what you guys are doing at AT&T to help us get us there. Thanks so much for your time.

JOHN: Kevin, it’s been a pleasure. Thanks for being with me.

KEVIN: This has been Work in Progress, presented by the Business Roundtable in partnership with the Human Potential Network.

Conversations about apprenticeship and workforce training in America’s skilled trades. Back to you, Jen.