Steel frames from the data center under construction during a tour of the Openai data center in Abilene, Texas, USA on September 23, 2025.
Shelby Tauber | Reuters
Openai, Meta and alphabet They are leading the data center boom in the US as they try to meet the enthusiastic demand for artificial intelligence and the computing resources needed to build increasingly sophisticated models.
There is one dazzling bottleneck as they prepare to collect and spend hundreds of billions of dollars in build-out: labor.
In manufacturing, construction and electricity trading, there is a lack of talent as skilled workers age the workforce without replacing younger workers. The United States could face a shortage of 1.9 million manufacturing workers by 2033, according to data from the National Association of Manufacturers, which described the issue as “economic and national security issues.”
Construction, related builders, contractors, or ABC will need projects that will require nearly half a million workers in 2025 alone. Workers lack the uncertainty associated with new tariffs and changes in immigration policies, and the problems are beginning to appear potentially insurmountable, experts say.
“I think these projects are likely to miss deadlines beyond budgets, but that’s typical for US construction, even large, less complicated projects,” said Anneal Bambus, ABC’s chief economist. “Now you’re adding this layer of complexity. This doesn’t exist in typical apartments or office buildings. …Do we have the workforce for that?
ABC’s construction backlog data shows that 14% of group members have contracts to perform their work in the data center. This is a stable level as it was first raised in June, indicating that the project has an 8.5 month backlog.
Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for construction fell to 3.2% in August, down to a record low from 3.4% a month ago, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
George Carrillo, CEO of Hispanic Construction Council, told CNBC that the shortage of workers is already affecting data center development. Carrillo said Hispanic-owned companies are growing the fastest in construction. A recent study from his group called for reforms to reduce timeline permissions, speed up payments to small contractors, and create legitimate work channels for trained people.
“These projects represent trillions of investment, but require more than steel and concrete,” Carrillo said in an email, citing the expected shortage of 3.2 million construction workers by 2030.
“Retirement, restrictive immigration policies and the threat of deportation are shrinking the labor pool, creating the risk of data centers becoming assets stuck in, and $1 billion buildings that can’t be online,” he said.
ABC CEO Mike Bellaman told CNBC that service speed is important for data center builds due to immediate demand.
It could present a great opportunity for young workers and people new to the industry to capitalize on the needs of people trained in a variety of fields to improve their skills and advance their ranks.
“They could be layman in the deal that installs the job,” Bellaman said. “They have a great opportunity to get lots of on-the-job training and practical training to become masters, so we can get apprentices to Journeyman levels and specific tasks.”
Given the size of the project, many jobs can last between three and ten years, according to Pat Lynch, executive managing director and global lead of CBRE’s Global Data Center Solutions. Lynch compared the project to construction of railways or large-scale oil and gas deployments.
“We see long-term economic stability from these projects in these regions,” he said. “Obviously, many of these locations require that jobs be drawn from large local areas, not just from a single state or several markets, when these skilled workers are short on major markets from the start.”
ABC’s BASU said the tech giant is so well capitalised and committed to massive growth that it is willing to take workers from other geographical regions and pay to train them in the skills they need.
“These hyperscalers have so much money. There’s a lot of stuff in terms of global Dominions and artificial intelligence. Maybe they’ll throw a lot of money on it,” he said. “These issues will go away.”
Watch: CNBC interviews with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Openai leaders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman
