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Robert Kiyosaki Says These 4 Jobs Will Survive in Any Economy

These careers could offer stability during the next recession.

By Josh Koebert , Edited by Calista Headrick

Updated Sept. 4, 2026

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Robert Kiyosaki has spent decades warning about crashes, bubbles, and economic collapses. But buried inside his December 2025 posts on X was a piece of advice that had nothing to do with assets. It was about careers, and it was one of his most practical takes: certain jobs hold their value regardless of what the economy does, and the people who hold them have a different kind of security than any investment can provide.

The specific trades Kiyosaki named in a December 7, 2025 post covered by CoinCentral: plumbing, nursing, and electrical work. He has also consistently pointed to elder care as a field built for demographic inevitability. His argument states these jobs stay essential in a recession, and in a boom, they cannot be offshored, and they resist the kind of automation that is eliminating white-collar entry-level roles. If you want to boost your bank account over a career rather than a quarter, Kiyosaki argues these are the fields to consider.

The BLS data largely agrees with him. Here is what each one actually looks like.

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1. Plumbing

BLS projected growth (2024–2034): +4%
Median annual wage: $62,970
Degree required: No

Water infrastructure does not stop failing because the stock market dropped. When the economy is good, plumbers work on new construction and remodeling. When the economy is bad, service calls keep coming because everyone needs clean water, and that will be one of the last jobs taken by automation, as one plumber put it in a widely shared forum post that echoed Kiyosaki's framing.

The BLS projects plumbers, pipefitters, and steamfitters to hold roughly 4% growth through 2034, with approximately 44,000 annual openings driven by retirements and steady service demand. The top 10% of plumbers earn over $105,150 annually. Entry requires completing an apprenticeship, typically four to five years, rather than a college degree, which means workers enter the field without the student loan burden that weighs on many white-collar entrants.

A national labor shortage in the trades has pushed wages higher and wait times for qualified plumbers longer in most markets. That supply constraint is itself a form of job security.

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2. Nursing

BLS projected growth (2024–2034): +5%
Median annual wage: $93,600
Degree required: Associate's or bachelor's, no advanced degree needed to enter

Nursing is the clearest example of what Kiyosaki means by recession-proof. Health care employment added hundreds of thousands of positions during the 2008–2010 recession period, even as nearly every other major sector contracted, according to BLS historical data. Patients do not delay illness until economic conditions improve.

The BLS projects registered nursing employment to grow 5% through 2034, adding about 189,100 positions, driven by an aging population and rising rates of chronic conditions. Nurses with specialized credentials in critical care, oncology, or pediatrics command significantly above-median salaries, and nurse practitioners, the next step up, are the fastest-growing health care occupation at 35% projected growth.

Kiyosaki's broader point about nursing is that it is a role that depends on human presence, physical touch, and patient trust in ways that make wholesale automation genuinely difficult.

3. Electrical work

BLS projected growth (2024–2034): +9%
Median annual wage: $62,350
Degree required: No

Electricians are one of the highest-paid and fastest-growing skilled trades on the BLS list, projecting roughly 81,000 openings per year through 2034. The 9% growth rate is three times the national average, driven by data center construction, EV infrastructure buildout, grid modernization, and the renewable energy transition, none of which slows meaningfully in a recession because the investments are largely driven by long-term infrastructure commitments rather than discretionary consumer spending.

Kiyosaki has specifically tied his interest in electrical work to the energy demands of AI: in a separate post, he noted that AI requires "massive amounts of energy," making the infrastructure that delivers it, including the workers who install and maintain it, structurally essential regardless of economic conditions.

The Electrical Training Alliance reported approximately 55,000 apprentices currently enrolled across nearly 300 training centers in the U.S., and employers still report significant shortages in many markets. The top 10% of electricians clear more than $106,000 annually, and the entire career path is available through a paid apprenticeship, not tuition.

4. Elder care

BLS projected growth (2024–2034): +17%
Median annual wage: $34,900 for home health aides; higher for licensed and specialized roles
Degree required: No for entry-level; certifications available for advancement

Elder care is what Kiyosaki calls the sleeper pick, and the demographics behind it are not subtle. The U.S. population aged 65 and older is projected to reach 80 million by 2040, roughly double the 2000 figure. That population needs care regardless of what the S&P 500 is doing.

Home health and personal care aides are projected to add 765,800 new positions by 2034, the single largest job-creation figure of any occupation in the BLS projections for the entire decade. The work is entirely non-automatable in its core form and entirely non-offshorable. No one has yet invented a robot that can provide the combination of physical care, emotional presence, and adaptive judgment that elder care requires at scale.

The wage ceiling is real but not the full picture: licensed practical nurses, registered nurses, and social workers in elder care settings earn substantially above the home health aide median, and the field provides a clear ladder from entry-level to licensed professional roles for those willing to pursue credentials.

Why these four specifically

Every one of these four trades shares the same structural profile: demand driven by physical necessity or demographic inevitability rather than discretionary consumer spending, work that cannot be delivered remotely or replaced by software, and a shortage of trained workers that has kept wages rising even in slow economic periods.

None of these fields are glamorous in the way that Silicon Valley careers have been marketed. Kiyosaki's argument, and the BLS data behind it, is that durability and necessity are worth more than glamour when the economy turns, and that the workers who hold essential physical skills have a different relationship with economic volatility than those whose work can be automated, offshored, or simply cut when budgets tighten.

Bottom line

Kiyosaki's four trades represent something genuinely valuable beyond his usual crash-prep messaging: they are careers that provide income security across economic cycles, not because they are exciting, but because they are essential. Plumbing, nursing, electrical work, and elder care all show up on the BLS's fastest-growing or most-needed lists for exactly the reasons Kiyosaki names.

For anyone rethinking a career, advising a young person, or looking for a path to get ahead financially that does not depend on market conditions, these four fields offer genuine stability backed by demographic data rather than prediction.

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