The data center boom has hit real constraints and pushback in 2026. Electricity supply, equipment shortages and local opposition are the explanations most often cited. But staffing firm Kelly points to another problem and ranks it the biggest risk: there aren’t enough trained workers to build and run the facilities.
Of the four main causes listed in the firm's data center salary guide, Kelly calls workforce planning failure "the only one that is entirely within an organization’s control."
In April, Meta rolled out a free four-week fiber technician program, as fiber builds for data centers and broadband alike hit a skilled-labor wall. The guide points to similar efforts at Microsoft, Amazon and Oracle. But while tech giants like Meta build their own pipelines, the gap keeps widening: 53% of operators report difficulty finding qualified candidates, the guide says, up from 38% in 2018.
The problem isn’t new, according to Jake Rasweiler, a data center talent expert at Kelly. “It was a fifth priority,” he told Broadband Nation. “Now it’s moved up because everybody’s struggling with it.”
Land was the crisis of 2022, he said, and power of 2023, followed by supply chains. The workforce problem only became harder for the data center sector to ignore when the trades on its job sites, from HVAC manufacturers to fiber crews, were all competing for the same talent. And it extends beyond the job site: A Deloitte analysis found more than a third of new postings from power companies and data center developers sought the same set of workers.
Rasweiler has seen the problem firsthand. At American Tower, where he ran the fiber business and launched a data center arm, new markets lacked an existing workforce, he said, so the company staffed a Raleigh data center with tower talent from its fiber operations.
The industry has to do the same, he argued: “We have to look to adjacent industries for people that can be upskilled.” Kelly’s guide makes a similar case, urging employers to recruit workers from telecom, electrical work and the skilled trades, and train them quickly.
The translation problem
Telecom is one of those pools the data center industry is drawing on, according to Kelly’s guide. Its workforce is more geographically spread than data center talent, as Rasweiler noted, because cell service has to work everywhere. Telco carriers, meanwhile, have been cutting jobs.
When Kelly asks clients whether they would take someone from that world, “invariably, the answer is yes,” he said, given that they're ready to put in the work and learn what doesn't translate.
Uptime Institute research cited in the guide found 66% of data center employers report difficulty filling technical roles, and only 15% of applicants meet minimum qualifications. Clients once asked for specific years of experience, then began accepting workers from adjacent industries, Rasweiler detailed. Lately, they have been telling him: “I want to find somebody that’s willing to learn.”
That shift, he said, is “a reflection of the increased recognition of competition for talent,” adding that “data center operators will take every class seat that they can provide if they can put a butt in the seat."
For workers outside the industry, the first obstacle is vocabulary. The most common mistake, Rasweiler said, is assuming “the job that they had in another industry is called the same thing in the data center industry.”
A wireless switch technician, for example, might look for data center technician or data center operations technician roles. Pay varies by level: the guide lists telecom technicians at an average of $87,000, against $68,000 for a Data Center Technician I and $92,000 for a Technician II.
Transferable skills can get a worker “in the door initially,” Rasweiler said, but credentials tailored to the industry can lead toward the top salaries. The work may not suit everyone, he acknowledged, since it trades the field for the same facility for a long time.
For interested job seekers — be it a telecom worker recently laid off or an electrician looking to make a change — his advice was to do the research on what skills translate, "to connect the dots between a comparable job and what it’s called in your old industry and your new industry. And that’s where people will often struggle first.”
“Be willing to learn and find out and try and understand the breadth of opportunities and how they may relate to your past experience,” he concluded.