Ford CEO says his Gen Z son is choosing hands-on work: ‘He feels like that’s more fulfilling than doing summer school at some fancy college’

Jim Farley has one of the most recognizable names in American business. But when it comes to the question millions of parents are quietly asking around the dinner table—is college really worth it?—Ford’s CEO says his own household is no exception.

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In an exclusive interview with Fortune, Farley revealed that his son has chosen to spend the summer working as a fabricator in North Carolina rather than taking summer classes. “He feels like that’s more fulfilling than doing summer school at some fancy college,” Farley said. “I think that’s ironic and also a bit satisfying—that we’re rediscovering the value of these jobs that indeed powered all of us to go to college.”

The comment isn’t Farley’s first on the subject. Last October, Fortune reported on Ford’s Pro Accelerate summit about his son’s skepticism about a four-year degree — surprising him by saying he had just had a fulfilling summer working as a mechanic and adding, “I don’t know why I need to go to college.” Farley has also talked about how he has deliberately structured his son’s summers around hands-on trades work—welding, fabricating, working with his hands.

When told that the story seems to be resonating, Farley said he wasn’t surprised. “The job market’s not easy for young college graduates,” he told Fortune this week. “If you’re a parent of a college graduate, you’re asking the same question that our household is—what’s going to become of our kids and their careers?”

He’s not wrong that the cultural tide is shifting. A November 2025 NBC News poll found that 63% of Americans now say a four-year degree is “not worth the cost”—up from 47% in 2017. Gen Z is acting on that skepticism: Between 2011 and 2023, roughly 2 million fewer students enrolled in four-year universities, and in the first quarter of 2024, Gen Z made up nearly 25% of all new hires in skilled trades. A February 2026 survey found 60% of Gen Zers plan to pursue skilled-trade work this year.

America’s truck for the essential economy

The personal anecdote comes as Farley has made the so-called “essential economy”—the tradespeople, fabricators, electricians, and welders who keep the country running—a central pillar of his tenure at Ford. On May 7, the company unveiled the 2027 Ford Super Duty Carhartt Special Edition, a co-branded work truck built in partnership with the 130-year-old Detroit workwear giant. It was less a product reveal than a celebration of the people who actually use the truck to run their businesses, bringing together some 300 essential economy workers and employees in Detroit.

“It’s not a pretend truck. It’s not a show-off truck,” Farley said. “It’s an F-250 that people buy to go work. But I bet it’ll wind up being a badge of honor for a lot of people who show up at the work site.”

The truck is designed to feel, from the inside out, like wearing a Carhartt jacket. Duck canvas seat inserts, Carhartt Brown and Field Khaki color options, and dual-branded badging carry the collaboration’s aesthetic throughout the cab. Under the hood, buyers can spec the truck with Ford’s 6.7-liter Power Stroke diesel—the most powerful diesel engine in its class—or a high-output 7.3-liter gas V8. A range of Pro Power Onboard options, up to 4.0 kilowatts, lets workers run job-site tools directly from the bed.

Carhartt CEO Linda Hubbard, who joined Farley in talking to Fortune, said the partnership is anything but a marketing exercise. “For Ford and Carhartt, this isn’t a side initiative,” she said. “It’s really core to both of our companies and how we operate.” She noted that Hamilton Carhartt called workers “world builders” when he founded the company in the 1880s. “How do we get young people to think: yeah, that would be a great career for me, and something I’d be proud of doing?”

The origin story of their partnership is vintage Farley, an automotive marketing wizard since the 1990s. Several years ago, he took his daughter—then just starting high school—to the Carhartt store in downtown Detroit. He was struck not just by the apparel but by how Carhartt had consistently portrayed working-class America as aspirational. “I came back to the company and said, ‘Why aren’t we doing a co-branded product with Carhartt?'” When the opportunity eventually materialized, he was all-in. “I’ve never felt a more organic, natural partnership. We’re both from Detroit. We’ve both made it through wars and economic downturns and upturns. We have the same customers and the same respect for those customers.”

Crisis in the third inning

The truck launch lands against a backdrop that Farley and Hubbard described with real urgency. The skilled-trade shortage—the gap between the jobs America desperately needs filled and the workers available to fill them—remains, in Farley’s words, “full-blown.” He placed the country in “the second or third inning” of grappling with it seriously, noting that awareness has improved but solutions remain fragmented. “So many of the real problems are in