Ford CEO Jim Farley says America is sleepwalking past its ‘essential economy’ crisis. Goldman Sachs just showed how big it really is

America’s AI ambitions may be undone not by a lack of capital or computing power, but by a shortage of electricians.

That’s the emerging consensus between two disparate titans of the Fortune 500: Ford CEO Jim Farley, who has spent years sounding the alarm about a crisis in what he calls the “essential economy,” and Goldman Sachs, which is putting hard numbers on a labor crunch that threatens to slow the very AI build-out Wall Street has been banking on.

Farley has been the...