Will Tradesmen Get Paid?
By 2030, the homeowner who once called a plumber may instead put on AR goggles and have AI walk them through the fix step by step. The one who can afford it may simply own a $15,000 all-purpose humanoid that handles it overnight. We have always hired tradespeople for two things: their knowledge and their tools. Both are rapidly becoming available to everyone. Even homeowners who want to support human workers may find that job loss or rising costs leave them with no real choice.
Some Early Evidence: The displacement of trade labor has already begun at the task level. Canvas’s AI-driven drywall finishing robot — commercially deployed since 2022 — uses computer vision and machine learning to map and finish rooms autonomously, cutting schedules by 60% and reducing labor requirements by 40%. At Amazon’s fulfillment centers, Agility Robotics’ Digit humanoid operates at an estimated $10–12/hour — versus $30 for a human. Figure AI’s humanoid completed a 20-hour continuous shift on BMW’s production line in 2025. The decisive factor for homeowners will be cost: analysts project general-purpose humanoids will reach $10,000–$15,000 by 2030 — roughly the same price as a new HVAC system.
The Prayer
What follows is a work of fiction — an imaginative look at one possible future, offered not to alarm but to help us think, pray, and prepare.
The first time it happened, I tried to laugh. A woman from down the road—someone I’d patched drywall for, someone whose kids had sat at my table—met me at her porch with a sympathetic smile and a cardboard box of muffins.
“Frank,” she said, her eyes avoiding my dusty boots, “we’re all set. The home unit handled it.”
Behind her, through the window, I saw it: a pale, quiet humanoid moving with an annoying, liquid grace. It was rolling paint onto a living-room wall in even strokes. No radio playing the classic rock station. Just smooth, steady work and a soft, digital chime every time it finished a section. I held my ladder like a man holding a relic—heavy, cumbersome, and suddenly out of place.
“It’s cheaper,” she added quickly, as if that made it okay. Noticing the look on my face, she whispered, “Look, if I had my way we’d go back to the way things were. It just doesn’t make sense anymore. I’m sorry Frank.”
Sorry. That word kept showing up in my week like a grease stain you couldn’t scrub out. The parish school cancelled my after-school tutoring gig. Families had “personal learning companions” now, tireless and tailored, able to teach literature and calculus with ease. Even the small jobs—the leaky faucets, the creaking gates—dried up. “The bot can do it,” people said, and they said it the way they used to say, “God is good,” without realizing they’d turned it into a catchphrase.
At home, my workbench sat clean. Too clean. My hands missed the grit of sandpaper and the resistance of oak. My wife watched me toss another job listing into the trash, her silence more supportive than any speech. At dinner, she set a plate in front of me and squeezed my shoulder, as if to remind my body it still mattered.
That night I knelt in the living room, alone in the dark. The crucifix above the fireplace caught a sliver of moonlight. Christ’s hands were open—still offering something the world could not automate. I realized then that what hurt most wasn’t the lost income. It was the way the town had begun to treat human presence like a quaint inconvenience—messy, slow, and tragically imperfect.
At breakfast, my oldest asked, cautiously, “Dad… what will you do?”
I looked at my hands. They were scarred and stained, but they were mine. I wanted to say, I don’t know. Instead, I said the truer thing. “I’ll do what fathers do. I’ll provide. I’ll adapt. And I’ll refuse to believe that usefulness is the measure of a man.”
I went to the rectory and asked if anyone needed help who couldn’t afford a robot. Father blinked, then smiled like a man remembering a forgotten language.
By afternoon, I was repairing a widow’s steps. I wasn’t alone; I was teaching her grandson how to hold a brush, the boy’s small hand shaking as he tried to find the rhythm. I prayed under my breath with each stroke: Give us this day our daily bread. Not as a metaphor. As a plea.