Ford CEO Jim Farley is issuing a wake-up call to America: the country's economic strength depends not just on the innovation hotspots of Silicon Valley, but on the everyday industries that get things "moved, built, or fixed." In a series of recent commentaries and interviews, Farley has been highlighting the mounting crisis in the "essential economy"-sectors like manufacturing, skilled trades, and infrastructure-and outlines how automation and artificial intelligence threaten to upend the white-collar workforce while blue-collar fields face unprecedented shortages.