AI Data Center Boom Sparks Electrician Gold Rush—Skilled Trades Cashing In Big

Power pros are raking it in as AI's hunger for electricity hits unprecedented levels.

Wiring the Future

Data centers now guzzle more juice than some small countries—and every new server rack needs expert hands to bring it online safely. Electricians command premium rates as tech giants scramble to build out capacity.

No College Degree Required

While Silicon Valley coders face layoffs, licensed electricians bypass the traditional tech pathway entirely. Their skills can't be outsourced or automated—not when faulty wiring means million-dollar meltdowns.

Copper Over Code

Wall Street still bets on algorithms, but the real smart money flows through conduit pipes and circuit breakers. Funny how physical infrastructure always outlasts the latest fintech fad.

Turbocharged demand

The race to build data centers — the infrastructure that makes cloud storage, streaming, and high-frequency trading possible — has only sped up in the AI age, with global demand for data center capacity potentially almost tripling by 2030. That’s expected to turbocharge both electricity consumption and the need for skilled electricians, with the US seeing an average of about 81,000 job openings for electricians annually over the next decade.

Tech giants have also highlighted their reliance on skilled tradespeople for AI-related infrastructure projects. Google noted in a May paper that the country’s shortage of electrical workers could “constrain America’s ability to build the infrastructure needed to support AI, advanced manufacturing, and a shift to clean-energy.”

So Google.org, Google’s philanthropic arm, announced $10 million in grant funding for the Electrical Training Alliance — a joint training program of the National Electrical Contractors Association and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers — to train 100,000 electricians and 30,000 new apprentices.

“We really believe that the US has an opportunity for a new era of innovation and growth, especially with the application of AI,” said Maab Ibrahim, head of economic opportunity for the Americas at Google.org. “It will require a lot of physical infrastructure upgrades, energy, and a skilled workforce that will build and maintain it.”

Microsoft President Brad Smith also said in an opinion piece for Fox Business earlier this year that while the tech behemoth has hired thousands of electricians to build out data center infrastructure, some workers still had to commute far distances or temporarily relocate to meet the need. He believed the US may need half a million new electricians in the next decade.

“The good news is that these are good jobs,” Smith wrote. “The bad news is that we don’t have a national strategy to recruit and train the people to fill these jobs.”

IBEW Local 26 has ramped up recruitment, training, and onboarding to seize the moment, Dabbs said.

“When we begin a project, the developers and the owners, they always want this stuff completed yesterday,” he said. “When we build these things, we’re running multiple shifts, we’re working seven days a week.”

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Bringing more workers on board

The IBEW Local 26 pitches young people by telling them they’re signing up for a career: paid training, a pension, an annuity plan, continuing education, and family health insurance. Once they get some experience under their belt, “they’ll be making over $100,000 a year,” Dabbs said. Some make double or triple that running overtime.

An inside wireman, who might install new wiring or troubleshoot electrical systems for commercial and industrial facilities, for example, can expect to make $59.50 an hour after completing a four-year apprenticeship with the union — well above the mean hourly wage of $43.47 for the D.C. metropolitan area in 2024. Apprentices, meanwhile, earn between $26.78 and $47.60 an hour depending on their level of experience and school performance.

“That’s what we lay out to everybody when we go to all these job fairs, career fairs, and go into the school systems and talk to the students,” Dabbs said.

Gretchen Newsom, an international representative for the IBEW's 9th District, which comprises local unions in several western states, said a chapter in Wenatchee, Wash., is bringing on hundreds of apprentices who are learning how to be electricians tuition-free.

The city of nearly 36,000 has, “at any given moment, more than 1,500 electricians currently working on data centers and other projects.”

“There’s nobody else that I’m aware of that provides free training, full family healthcare, a pension that they can rely on, and solid wages,” Newsom said. “It’s the best-kept secret that shouldn’t be a secret.”

Emma Ockerman is a reporter covering the economy and labor for Yahoo Finance. You can reach her at [email protected].