AI data centers and rural broadband are fighting over the same workers. AT&T and Meta are hiring thousands of fiber technicians to meet AI data center demand. But that is pulling skilled trades away from BEAD’s rural broadband rollout, and the pressure is likely to worsen in 2027.
In sum – what to know:
One pool, two priorities – The US is already short of 58,000 skilled tradesworkers to meet BEAD’s rural broadband goals; AI data centers are drawing on the same pipeline.
Carriers have upper hand – Large-scale hiring by the likes of AT&T and Meta solve their company shortages; but community-based BEAD providers can rarely match their pay.
Pressure is structural – Strain on master electricians and HVAC specialists will “worsen next year, as AI infra spending continues to expand”, say economists.
Late last week, NBC reported that the US was facing a major shortage of workers, including fiber splicers and cable technicians, needed to lay the approximately 66 million miles of new fiber-optic cable to connect data centers by 2029. The problem? A 2024 study by the FBA and the Power & Communication Contractors Association (PCCA) found that the industry was already short by around 58,000 tradespeople needed to meet the goals of the long-delayed $42.5 billion federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program. With two national infrastructure priorities now drawing on the same finite pool of skilled workers, are rural broadband users set to lose out?
Old shortages
The race to build data centres is often portrayed as a story that centres on huge capital deployments and raw compute power. But an often overlooked constraint is that of skilled labor, which in the case of large-scale data center buildouts, can require upwards of 3,000 workers to complete. This pressure on labor availability is rising, as the speed of data center investment and rollout accelerates. And while electricity generation is critical to progress, with around 600 GW of proposed data center projects said to be currently struggling to find sufficient power, labor shortages are exacerbating existing delays and raising costs.
According to Anirban Basu, chief economist at Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC), that pressure is unevenly spread across the construction trades. “AI data center construction places genuinely novel pressure on the trades pipeline, largely because it concentrates elevated demand in a handful of occupational categories,” he told RCRTech. In fact, he said, the structural shortage of skilled construction workers has been a decades-long problem, with the shortage worsening as experienced workers retire. But data centers’ intense, concentrated demand for master electricians and the most sophisticated HVAC professionals, he claimed, is “a new source of stress on workforce adequacy”.
Hiring push
Carriers’ response to the shortfall reinforces the scale of the problem. In May of this year, AT&T announced plans to hire around 3,000 technicians, on top of the 10,000 already hired in the last three years, with the outlay on worker training expected to reach between $50,000 and $80,000 per person. In April, Meta launched its own “LevelUp” four-week fibre tech training program to address the same gap.
Those hiring pushes are a rational response to a genuine shortage, but they also illustrate the tension that now sits between two infrastructure programs regarded as a national priority. With every technician trained by the likes of AT&T or Meta funneled into AI-related buildouts, fewer technicians are left to work on the smaller, community-based projects that form part of the BEAD program, with many companies unable to match hyperscaler-backed pay or training budgets. In fact, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts, workforce challenges have been cited as a problem in 41 states and Washington DC, which Pew identifies as a potential nationwide barrier to BEAD implementation, rather than a series of isolated challenges.
The breadth of vocations where a shortfall exists is extensive. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration’s own assessment lists 12 categories of workers needed to expand broadband infrastructure, from field engineers and electricians, to surveyors, trenchers and trucking crews. In addition, Pew found that demand for BEAD workers is rising sharply (as the initiative ramps up ahead of its 2030 deadline), just as the telecoms workforce appears to be shrinking, with the number of employees falling from a 35-year peak of 1.4 million in 2001 to just under 598,000 by 2025.
Collision course
The practical result of all this pressure, Basu said, is to “drive construction delivery costs even higher and delay projects”, including projects like BEAD that seek to ensure “every American is connected to 21st century opportunities.”
Asked how much delay or added cost this competition is actually causing, Basu claimed it was difficult to estimate and was likely to be project specific. What is more certain, however, is the trajectory, with “the situation [likely to] worsen next year as AI infrastructure spending continues to expand.” With hyperscaler capex still climbing and BEAD’s own construction wave only now getting underway in many US states, the dual federal and private-sector priorities are set for a collision course in 2027.
