Jun 25, 2026
If you were planning a home renovation or an upgrade to your heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system this summer, there’s a chance you could have a harder time finding someone to do the work.
It’s yet another way the data center boom is affecting Americans.
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Data centers require huge amounts of power and water once they’re up and running, but the demand for manpower to construct them is also massive.
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It’s a boom that those in the construction industry are calling a paradigm shift, and the effects are rippling across the country.
Data centers drive demand for electricians
Data centers have been making headlines recently, with lawmakers looking to stop residents’ electricity bills from skyrocketing due to increased strain on the grid, and those who live near data centers sounding the alarm on water issues.
Communities where data centers are slated to be built have also been trying to stop them.
But tech companies jockeying in the AI race haven’t shown signs of slowing down. The start of this year marked a new high for data centers, with construction starts hitting $25.2 billion. In January, 20 data center projects broke ground in the U.S., according to ConstructConnect News.
U.S. Census Bureau figures show that data centers now make up 2.3% of all U.S. construction spending, with spending passing $50 billion for the first time in April.
According to a blog post from workforce management platform Rivet, data center construction is much different than typical commercial construction for two reasons: It’s happening away from city centers, where there is a local labor pool, and the electrical needs are a far greater share of the work.
A report from the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers said that “between 45% and 70% of the entire budget for data center construction goes to the electrical subcontractor.”
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In an interview with Snips News, a trade publication that covers the HVAC industry, Jay Bowman, a partner with consulting and investment firm FMI, said a shortage of skilled labor was “the number one delivery challenge where big data center and infrastructure projects are active, and it’s even more pronounced in remote areas like west Texas.”
Bowman said there has been a “clear shift” when it comes to other types of construction projects competing with data center projects for labor. “We’ve seen contractors almost accidentally become data-center-only companies,” Bowman said, noting that “for many firms that started chasing data center projects just two or three years ago, those jobs can now make up over half their revenue and backlog.”
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The ‘double-edged sword’ of the Texas AI data center boom
In Abilene, Texas, a town that is home to a massive AI data center campus backed by Oracle and OpenAI, homebuilder Gene Lantrip is seeing the impacts firsthand. Lantrip told Realtor.com that the data center campus is a “double-edged sword.”
While the campus has brought new workers to the area, which means an increased demand for housing, Lantrip said that he is also dealing with longer timelines to build and repair houses, because many of his subcontractors have lost their workers to higher-paying data center jobs.
Workers can earn 25% to 30% more working on data center projects, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
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Lantrip told Realtor.com that there are 14,000 temporary workers in the area who need housing, and that he’s building more houses than he did “during the COVID boom” — but because there’s not enough skilled labor, it takes two months longer to complete a project.
“You have all these houses, and my electricians and plumbers and HVAC guys can’t keep their crews. My electrician hired 18-year-old kids, some in high school, and trained them,” Lantrip told Realtor.com. “But it takes time to train those kids.”
Ladd Schuiling, vice president of sales at Skilledtrades.com, told Realtor.com that while data center construction requires electricians with industrial and commercial experience, residential electricians could also be employed “to do things like pull wire, [which] almost every electrician, no matter industry or experience, knows how to do,” he said.
Scott Schwandt, president of Texas-based pipe company Gajeske, told Realtor.com that data center jobs don’t hire crews for weeks, but months, impacting the homebuilding industry.
“It exerts a quantifiable long-term pressure on the project timelines of residential and commercial builds, as the already undersupplied labor market absorbs higher numbers of skilled tradespeople,” Schwandt told Realtor.com.
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In Arizona, which is seventh in the country when it comes to the number of planned and operating data centers, if your air conditioning breaks down, you may be waiting longer to get it fixed.
Danny Niemela, vice president and CFO of ArDan Construction, a licensed contractor and home remodeler in Scottsdale, Ariz., told Realtor.com he’s seeing the impacts of data centers on the local workforce.
“If your AC went out in June, you may have previously waited two days for a qualified tech to show up. Now you could be looking at five or six days, or more if you need a specialty part delivered,” Niemela told Realtor.com.
He’s seen the cost of skilled labor increase as well.
“That $3,500 panel upgrade you had done two years ago will run you $4,200 this year. Don’t get me wrong, material costs have risen, too. But often, when you’re fighting a corporation for manpower, you lose every time.”
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Rebecca Payne has more than a decade of experience editing and producing both local and national daily newspapers. She's worked on the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail, Metro, Canada's National Observer, the Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press.
