AI companies like Meta and OpenAI have been offering multimillion-dollar pay packages to top talent, hoping to lure the best researchers and engineers away from their competitors. But there’s another dimension of the AI talent wars that has garnered far less attention: the massive shortage of electricians, plumbers, and heating and cooling technicians in the US who can build the physical data centers that power AI.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that between 2024 and 2034, there will be a shortage of roughly 81,000 electricians on average each year in the US, measured in terms of unfilled jobs. The BLS projects the number of employed electricians to grow 9 percent over the next decade, “much faster than the average for all occupations.” One McKinsey study came to a more dire conclusion: Between 2023 and 2030, it estimates that an additional 130,000 trained electricians—as well as 240,000 construction laborers and 150,000 construction supervisors—would be needed in the US.
The rapid construction of AI data centers across the country is likely a major driver of demand for skilled tradespeople. According to a May blog by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers—a labor union representing electrical workers in the US, Canada, and US territories—some local affiliates “are facing single data center projects that require two, three, sometimes four times their current membership.”
Chris Madello, an international representative with the United Association, a union for plumbers and pipe fitters, says data center projects are currently demanding more workers than any other single industry. He adds that with the growth of AI, which requires a huge amount of electricity to run, “more and more manpower” is required.
Some tech companies are already sounding the alarm about the dwindling pool of skilled tradespeople and taking steps to address it. Google announced last spring that it was donating an undisclosed amount of money to the Electrical Training Alliance, a group that provides training materials for electrical workers, to help 100,000 existing electricians upgrade their skills and train 30,000 new apprentices by 2030. The company said the project would contribute to an estimated 70 percent increase in the size of the trade in the coming years.
Tech companies building data centers have to compete for trades talent with other construction projects, including residential housing, hospitals, factories, and energy facilities. In all of these areas, there’s already not enough workers to go around. “We have had a skilled construction worker shortage in America for years,” says Anirban Basu, chief economist of the Associated Builders and Contractors, a trade group for the construction industry. In earlier eras, he says, tradespeople passed their skills on to their children, but more recently they have been encouraging the next generation to pursue four-year college degrees. As a result, Basu explains, the construction workers with the most advanced skills are now reaching retirement age.
“For years, the industry warned of a ‘silver tsunami’ in which these highly skilled baby boomers would retire in large numbers,” Basu says. “That period has arrived. It’s been here, and as a result, the industry has been dealing with generally expanding skilled-worker shortages.”
Dan Quinonez, an executive at the Plumbing-Heating-Cooling Contractors Association (PHCC), a trade group for plumbing and HVAC professionals, says that the plumbing industry is “doing everything” it can to increase the number of workers available. But the problem requires long-term solutions and can’t be fixed overnight.
Demand for workers also varies widely by trade and by region. In northern Virginia, for example, there’s no lack of people applying to become plumbers or pipe fitters, even as data center construction has surged in the area, Madello says.
“We always have far more people applying than we actually accept into our apprenticeship programs,” Madello explains. How many trainees are admitted, he adds, depends largely on how many union members are expected to retire in the coming years.
One problem, however, is getting people trained quickly enough to work on data center projects. Quinonez says the work itself is not very different from other plumbing jobs, but data centers are built on strict schedules, leaving little room for delays or errors.
That matters because apprentices typically learn on the job alongside more experienced plumbers at active construction sites. On data center projects, Quinonez says, companies are far less willing to take risks, since even small mistakes can slow a project down.
“It could get very costly for a contractor for something to go wrong,” he explains. Apprentices and trainees, he adds, may have to go through “more rigorous training” before they are assigned to help build a data center.
David Long, CEO of the National Electrical Contractors Association (NECA), says the group has done a good job keeping pace with retirements by training new electricians. But the scale and technical requirements of data center projects has made it a “challenge”—which he argues that NECA is appropriately meeting—to ensure that all workers are onboarded quickly and safely.
Charles White, who oversees regulatory affairs at PHCC, tells WIRED that there’s plenty of incentives for plumbers, pipe layers, and HVAC technicians to work on data centers. The projects typically offer higher pay than other types of construction, partially because of their tight schedules, which make it more likely that workers will log overtime.
White adds that high demand for plumbers incentivizes workers to switch employers, and they are often enticed by the longer hours and therefore better pay being offered by data center developers.
“I actually hear these stories all the time,” Quinonez tells WIRED. “You’re going to get paid quickly because you’re dealing with an Amazon, or a Google, or a large tech company. So there’s competition across the board.”
“The competition does get fierce,” Quinonez adds. “And part of the problem is there’s just not enough plumbers and HVAC technicians.”
In any industry, companies are always competing for a limited pool of manpower. But in construction, Madello says, some of the pressure is offset by the reserve of traveling tradespeople, who are prepared to show up “anytime you build something in the middle of nowhere.”
It’s unclear how long demand for tradespeople will last after the artificial intelligence boom eventually starts to wane. When construction ends, data centers typically keep a small crew on site around the clock, along with a network of outside contractors who handle repairs for multiple facilities.
“When the project gets done, they’re not crawling with people,” White tells WIRED. “But you have all of this stuff that has to be maintained and systems operated. So a certain number of those folks are going to stick around and get on a maintenance crew or an operations crew.”
If construction eventually tapers off, there might not be enough alternative jobs to go around, especially if the US economy enters a recession. But for now, business is great, and how things will end remains anyone’s guess. “Is it a sustained boom? Does it crash spectacularly?” says Basu. “Is the activity just gradually receding once the heart of the boom is over?”
The post The Real AI Talent War Is for Plumbers and Electricians appeared first on Wired.
