Americans avoid challenging physical work: Elon Musk on H-1B visa row

Elon Musk on Monday drew fresh criticism during the ongoing H-1B debate after claiming that the United States lacked people willing or able to take on physically demanding jobs. “America has a major shortage of people who can do challenging physical work or who even wish to train to do so,” said Musk in a post on X.

His comments followed Ford chief executive Jim Farley’s warning that the company is struggling to fill 5,000 mechanic roles that pay $120,000 a year. The exchange added new energy to the wider discussion about labour shortages in the country.

Rich Garrity, a National Association of Manufacturers board member, also reacted to Farley’s lament and said much of the crisis could to attributed to a skill set deficit, due to a lack of concrete foundational training courses available for students in the country’s educational system.

“We’re not just missing bodies, but we’re really missing…skill sets that can connect to 21st-century manufacturing needs. The community colleges, the career tech programs do a solid job in providing foundational training, but we often see that they’re out of date when it comes to keeping up with how fast things are moving from a technology standpoint,” he told the New York Post.

As of late 2025, the US has roughly 4,00,000 manufacturing vacancies, according to Fortune’s analysis of Labour Department data, even as the national unemployment rate sits at 4.3 per cent.

H-1B visa row: What did Trump say?

Last week, in a FOX News interview, President Donald Trump said the United States needed specialist talent from abroad and that his administration would not end the H-1B visa programme. He pointed to recent raids involving South Korean battery workers and said this type of work required expertise that many domestic workers did not have.

When host Laura Ingraham said that visas would make it harder for him to raise wages for American workers, Trump pushed back.

“You also do have to bring in talent,” said Trump.

When Ingraham argued that the US already had “plenty of talented people here,” Trump replied, “No.”

“You don’t have certain talents. And you have to, people have to learn. You can’t take people off, like an unemployment line, and say, ‘I’m going to put you into a factory. We’re going to make missiles,’” said Trump.

Last month, the US government imposed a $100,000 fee on companies hiring foreign workers through H-1B petitions. The cost has created new hurdles for employers, but the programme remains central for firms in tech hubs such as Silicon Valley, which rely heavily on overseas STEM professionals.

Musk’s post criticised online: What are people saying?

Musk’s post drew sharp pushback, with social media users saying he has previously made similar claims about Americans lacking skill in STEM fields, and was now extending the same argument to trade jobs.

One user wrote: “You’re wrong. My white 22-yr-old son has been begging for this kind of work for the past 6 months. Nobody will give him an apprenticeship or entry-level job in Dallas. He is about to finish trade school and has applied for hundreds and hundreds of jobs, even jobs that aren’t in his trade. Can’t even get an interview with Walmart. He is intelligent and hardworking and even has some great customer service work history. He is not introverted or weird or unable to shine in an interview. You guys are either lying or there is a breakdown somewhere because my son isn’t the only one.”

Another user said, “First they came for White Collar work. Now they’re repeating the same lies about Blue Collar work.”

A third comment added: “America has the world’s best military that pulls from the population, but magically when it comes to corporate America, it’s ‘nobody can/wants to work’ and then we see foreign labour and depressed wages.”

Why does the wider H-1B debate continue?

The US Department of Labour recently accused businesses of exploiting the H-1B visa route by replacing young Americans with foreign workers, saying India benefits the most from the programme.

“Young Americans have had the American Dream stolen from them, as jobs have been replaced by foreign workers due to rampant abuse of the H-1B visa,” said the department in a post sharing its new campaign video.

“For generations, we’ve told Americans that if they work hard enough, they can achieve the American Dream. But many young Americans have had this dream stolen from them,” the video’s narrator said, as on-screen text praised President Donald Trump and Labour Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer for “putting America first.”

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis also criticised the H-1B programme, calling it a “total scam” during a Fox News interview. “Most of them are from one country, India,” he said. “There’s a cottage industry about how all those people make money off this system.”

He added that American workers are often required to train their replacements before being dismissed.