Private Jets, Huge Raises And 'Man Camps': How Data Center Builders Are Luring Workers In Short Supply

As the race for artificial intelligence supremacy heats up, developers are increasingly competing for a limited pool of workers to build and set up data centers. The shortage is a worsening problem as timelines accelerate in a bid to begin profiting as soon as possible.

With monthly spending on new construction hitting $40B on average over the summer, the data center construction workforce — or lack thereof — has added challenges for project managers overseeing their construction and tacked on costs for backers seeking yield.

“The pressures are not for the faint of heart,” said JLL Data Centers Division President Matt Landek, whose division is overseeing six construction projects. “Finding the staff is extremely difficult, the logistics are overwhelming, and there’s constant pressure to get the equipment tested and turn the servers on.” 

A massive infusion of capital in the space, especially from private equity, comes with substantial revenue expectations, Landek said. 

With billions of dollars being deployed, every moment matters. Since data center valuation depends on being live, investors can earn even more returns if construction timelines can shave off a few months.  

So companies are spending to address a workforce shortage that is most acute for electricians, who are needed to mitigate worsening power shortages in addition to more commonplace installation and wiring. 

The Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts a shortage of roughly 81,000-plus electricians nationally every year through 2030, while Microsoft President Brad Smith said he thinks the U.S. may need half a million new electricians over the next decade.

“It’s all about electricians, on every project,” said Ben Burgett, vice president of data centers at Gray Construction, which is overseeing 1 gigawatt of data center development spread across seven campuses. “That's the longest pole of a tent on every project.” 

The need for temporary power, to help power the construction itself and even test installations, requires electrical engineers to keep large gas generators humming.

As data center growth comes up against the limits of the power supply and local grids, developers need staff that can assemble and set up local microgrids to help power the servers, adding complexity. 

Without enough electricians and other skilled tradespeople, projects can easily miss deadlines and upset the delicate choreography of construction, what Kojo CEO Maria Davidson calls a “cascading waterfall of delays.” 

Precise estimates aren't available, but the strategies being used to avoid these consequences suggest serious investment.

Davidson said there are some places where union electricians are bringing in $130 an hour before overtime. Everyday electricians make an average of $30 per hour, according to ZipRecruiter.

The need to get staff working is so critical that Davidson said her staff has been flown on private jets to jobsites to help train new electricians on the company's software and get up and running as fast as possible. 

In response, developers have resorted to numerous strategies to attract workers. They will contact local unions, then work with neighboring states to bring in more staff. At more remote sites in regions like the Texas Panhandle or the Dakotas, developers and contractors have resorted to constructing “man camps.” 

These remote villages are complete with mess halls, recreational vehicle hookups, laundry facilities, dorms and other amenities to attract and house workers, complete with a dedicated janitorial staff.

Landek said he has seen miniature cities with full sewer systems and hookups for Airstream trailers. Journeyman electricians, using message boards and sites like Where2Bro.com, follow the work and elevated pay around the country.

Sourcing specific items, like switchgear or the cooling systems for these projects, requires mastering supply chains. 

This growing complexity means talent who can perform and oversee this work has become scarce.  

“Talented project managers and foremen are the rock stars of the industry,” Davidson said. “There’s huge competition, and we’re seeing a lot of companies poach each other’s teams.”

A constant array of challenges requires hundreds or even thousands of skilled workers on-site. One Gray project in Mississippi has roughly 3,000 workers on-site.

The acceleration has been relentless, especially in the hot spots with multiple campuses under construction, such as Phoenix, Texas, Ohio and Atlanta.  

About five years ago, if a contractor was working on an eight-building campus, there would be pressure to start the second building while finishing the first one, Burgett said. 

A few years ago, that turned into starting a new building every three months. Today, the expectation is that all eight are under construction simultaneously on jobsites running multiple shifts, 24 hours a day.

“If there are enough human hours in a day to do the work, you could do it,” Burgett said. “But it just creates that much more effort at coordination. You have to give yourself some grace, because what we're doing right now is unprecedented.”

In a Turner & Townsend survey of 300 executives, half said bids for data center projects had risen between 6% and 15% over the past year, with 21% saying it had jumped 15% or more.

“People are rushing into a very frothy market,” said Flexential CEO Ryan Mallory, whose firm has been in the industry for 25 years. “They may not know and understand the power requirements, the permitting and zoning, and the nuances associated with this, and they’re running into some headwinds.”

The frenzy has been years in the making. Typically, a larger data center requires two or more years of preconstruction work like finding land and getting entitlements and power, then two years of on-site construction, if all goes well. 

From the jump, new data center projects race toward the commissioning date, when enough internal tests and quality control efforts have been done that the building can be handed off to the client or tenant. 

“That’s our Super Bowl,” Burgett said.

During development, project managers run into numerous potential bottlenecks. Once foundations are laid and walls are up, on-site teams need to coordinate tradespeople, deliveries and even crane rentals to stay on track. 

On new campuses using high-end chips from firms like Nvidia, each server rack can cost as much as $5M, so the equipment is sometimes delivered by armed guards enforcing restricted site entry, further complicating sequencing and construction timelines. 

The speed of chip design evolution is forcing builders to maintain flexibility throughout the build to accommodate consistent alterations. Redesigns can happen up to when the servers arrive, Landek said.

The Turner & Townsend survey found design changes were the second-biggest challenges facing developers, after power shortages.

Compensation has climbed as projects compete to land staff. In regions of high demand, where many contractors work on campus-sized projects in parallel, the salaries of electricians can go up as much as 25% per quarter, Mallory said.  

Workers are offered bonuses for the days they show up, overtime, number of cables laid and more. 

The boom has led to companies tapping any talent with related skills. Burgett said a significant number of contractors from the oil and gas industries have pivoted to data center work. 

Even nuclear technicians from the military, who boast significant technical skill sets, are being called up. JLL recently hired a helicopter mechanic, assuming it can train the worker on data center projects. 

Nobody in the industry sees this breakneck pace slowing anytime soon, despite talk about an AI bubble. Sourcing remains difficult. Kojo data shows some gear is taking a year to arrive after an order is placed.

The Turner & Townsend industry survey found only 17% of data center executives thought the supply chain was prepared for the onslaught of demand.

And construction will likely become more challenging as labor constraints multiply. Older data centers are starting to age out and require refreshes and retrofits. JLL has a $400M annual business in retrofit work alone. 

And the vast number of projects in the pipeline suggests continued pressure to deliver for years to come. Flexential has four smaller data center projects in the works in Denver, Atlanta and Hillsboro, Oregon, representing roughly 150 MW, and it has about 200 MW in land projects coming after that.

The firm expects to double its assets under management in the next four years, a pace Mallory sees across the industry. 

“This is going to go on for another five, seven years,” he said. “Today, they’re putting in the transmission and power just for the backlog that’s in place.”