Data Center Workforce Report 2026

What the numbers say

1. A data center campus needs about 4.1 construction workers per megawatt at its busiest. That is the median across 19 campuses under 1.5 GW in our tracker that published both their capacity and their peak workforce, and it lines up with Meta (about 4 per MW in El Paso) and Stargate Abilene (about 5.3). A 1 GW campus therefore needs roughly 4,080 people on site at peak. The multi-gigawatt megacampuses are built in phases over several years, so their peak crews are smaller per MW: about 1.9 across 8 projects.
2. The 54 large campuses under construction add up to about 134,800 workers at peak, with a likely range of 96,300 to 157,700. That counts only campuses of 100 MW and up, so the real national demand is higher.
3. Columbus, OH is under the most pressure. Its 2,214 MW under construction would need about 6,160 workers at peak, equal to 41% of the metro's electricians, HVAC mechanics, construction managers and electrical technicians combined, followed by Atlanta (41%).
4. Texas has the most large-campus capacity under construction, 14.2 GW across 17 campuses, much of it in rural counties far from the big metro labor pools. Those projects rely on traveling crews.
5. Electricians are the tightest trade. Between 45% and 70% of a data center construction budget goes to the electrical contractor (IBEW). The US has 757,220 electricians at a median $63,190 a year, and BLS expects 72,700 openings a year through 2035, mostly to replace people who retire or leave.
6. Once a campus opens, the hiring shifts to operations. At about 0.35 permanent jobs per MW, the campuses now under construction or announced will need around 31,300 operations staff: critical facility technicians, controls and electrical engineers, and network specialists. Uptime Institute's 2025 survey found 46% of operators struggle to find qualified candidates and 37% struggle to keep staff.

Where the workforce runs out first

For each major market we take the capacity under construction, convert it to a peak construction workforce (developers' own figures where published, otherwise 4.1 workers per MW), and compare that with the local pool of electricians, HVAC mechanics, construction managers and electrical technicians from BLS (May 2025). The pressure figure is the share of that pool the projects would need if they all hit peak at once: a stress test, not a forecast.

Local pool: BLS OEWS May 2025 employment for electricians (47-2111), HVAC mechanics and installers (49-9021), construction managers (11-9021) and electrical and electronic engineering technicians (17-3023) in each metro area (Northern Virginia uses the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria metro). Capacity under construction is the published market figure where CBRE or JLL report one, which includes colocation and smaller buildings; elsewhere it is the large campuses in our tracker within 50 miles. Workforce range uses the middle half of tracked projects.

Large campuses under construction, by state

These are the campuses of 100 MW and up in our data center tracker that are under construction now. Where a developer published its peak construction workforce we use that figure; otherwise we estimate it from the campus size. Many of these sites are in rural counties, so the local pool is the whole state, and crews travel in.

This table counts only large campuses. States whose building is mostly colocation and single buildings, such as Georgia (Atlanta), Virginia and Arizona, have far more under construction than shown here; see the metro table above for those markets.

Permanent jobs cover campuses under construction and announced, using each developer's published figure where there is one and 0.35 jobs per MW otherwise. Statewide pool uses the same four BLS occupations as the metro table.

The benchmarks behind the model

Our ratio of 4.1 construction workers per MW comes from 19 campuses under 1.5 GW in our tracker that published both their capacity and their peak workforce. These public figures from developers and state agencies check it from the outside.

Who to hire at each phase, and when

Each phase pulls on a different part of the workforce, and the lead time for the scarce roles is longer than most project schedules assume. Start each search before the phase begins, not when it does.

Pay and jobs: BLS OEWS May 2025, national. Growth and openings: BLS Employment Projections 2025 to 2035; all occupations +3.5%. Controls engineers have no BLS code of their own and are counted with electrical engineers. Check pay in any city with our salary calculator.

Hiring is hard, and keeping people is harder

Sources: Uptime Institute Global Data Center Survey 2025; 2026 survey press release. More in our data center workforce shortage statistics.

How this report is built

• Projects: large US campuses of 100 MW or more in our data center tracker, checked against its source and updated monthly. This page recalculates whenever the tracker changes. Last tracker update: October 2026.
• Workers per MW: the median of peak construction jobs divided by capacity for every tracked project that published both, worked out separately for campuses under 1.5 GW (19 projects) and larger phased campuses (8). A project's own published workforce is always used where it exists. The low and high estimates use the 25th and 75th percentiles. Permanent jobs use the same method (25 projects).
• Local pool: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025) for electricians, HVAC mechanics, construction managers and electrical technicians. It refreshes automatically when BLS publishes each spring.
• Pressure: the peak workforce the market's projects would need, as a share of that pool. It assumes every project peaks at once and every worker comes from the metro, so read it as relative stress between markets. In practice schedules are staggered and large sites bring in traveling crews.
• What it leaves out: campuses under 100 MW outside the markets with published totals, renovation work, and the power plants and transmission lines that compete for the same electricians.