Data Center Gold Rush Sparks Big Paydays for Electricians

The AI data center construction boom has made it a good time to be an electrician.

That’s according to a report Wednesday (July 29) by the New York Times (NYT), which says these projects are drawing skilled trade workers into remote areas with some of the steepest paydays ever witnessed in the industry.

The report added that this uptick has helped mitigate slowing in other sectors, such as office construction and housing. However, competition for labor has begun to put strain on other parts of the industry, the report said.

“There’s no question the resources are very limited, so decisions to build one thing kind of drag from another,” said Mario Iacobacci, who heads the construction and infrastructure advisory practice at Oxford Economics.

Developers are spending heavily to entice workers, particularly in the rural communities where they are constructing data centers. The report cites an analysis by job marketplace Indeed which fund that hourly installation and maintenance positions at data centers pay 42% more than similar roles in other fields.

That has led to a bidding war, the NYT added, as workers in markets with a lot of data center projects can be wooed away by bonuses or larger per diem rates. This has led contractors to services such as Aerotek, the report said.

“It is creating a labor tension that is really delicate,” said Marty Schager, Aerotek’s director of data center market development.

“You’ve got a passive job-seeker community out there right now that I think is looking to potentially capture opportunity with this once-in-a-generation data center gold rush.”

That gold rush, however, is not without its critics. As reported here earlier this month, some communities have begun to push back against data center projects, with New York state recently adopting a moratorium on the construction of new data centers.

Similar measures are under consideration in Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia.

“New York’s moratorium may not dramatically alter the trajectory of U.S. data center growth on its own, but it represents an important milestone in the evolving regulatory landscape surrounding AI infrastructure,” law firm Foley & Lardner wrote in an analysis of the issue.

“As states balance economic development opportunities with energy, environmental and community concerns, industry stakeholders should expect heightened scrutiny of future data center projects.”