{"id":471415,"date":"2026-10-20T08:34:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-20T08:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/471415\/"},"modified":"2026-10-20T08:34:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-20T08:34:07","slug":"data-center-boom-leads-to-surge-in-demand-for-electricians-and-interest-in-joining-trade","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/471415\/","title":{"rendered":"Data center boom leads to surge in demand for electricians \u2014 and interest in joining trade"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The North Texas Electrical Training Alliance said apprentices can earn double pay at some jobs. Now, 10 times more people are applying to its training programs. <\/p>\n<p>GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas \u2014 Applications to the North Texas Electrical Training Center have climbed to about 700 a month, up from 60 to 70 a month just a few years ago, as a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wfaa.com\/article\/money\/business\/ai-warnings-from-inside-industry-land-north-texas-where-data-centers-going-up\/287-6e946077-cc37-4831-9e5d-915738b21de3\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\">surge in data center construction<\/a> drives demand for electricians, the center\u2019s training director said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDemand has grown crazy as of late,\u201d said Jason Allen. \u201cIt\u2019s gone exponential.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>                                            &#13;<br \/>\n                                                <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.wfaa.com\/assets\/shared-images\/icons\/arrow-circle-down.svg\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\"\/>&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                                            &#13;<br \/>\n                                                This story continues below.&#13;<\/p>\n<p>Allen said the program now receives about 10 times more applicants than it has spots to fill, and he&#8217;s looking to expand to keep up.<\/p>\n<p>Allen said data centers are the main reason for the demand.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a bunch of them going and they require a lot of electricians and that is the big driver there,\u201d he said, adding that the trend has been building over the last three years.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere\u2019s just not enough of us out there,\u201d Allen said. \u201cAnd so when there\u2019s not enough manpower you need to get people [and] the way you do that is incentives.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Allen said pay is a major draw. Wages start at $20.33 an hour plus benefits, he said, but some companies are also offering overtime incentives, including paying time-and-a-half and double-time.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThere is a substantial amount of money to be made out there in the field for sure,\u201d Allen said.<\/p>\n<p>He also credited social media for the jump in applications.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think a big part of it is people on social media showing their checks,\u201d Allen said. \u201cPeople talking about how much money you can make in the trades has been a big part of the push.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Allen said the four year apprenticeship training involves 8,000 hours on the job \u2014 and a day in a classroom setting once every two weeks.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOur goal is to just train the best general electricians out there with our apprentices doing it safely every day,\u201d Allen said.<\/p>\n<p>One of those apprentices, Jacob Hamilton, is learning the fundamentals of electrical circuits in class at the training center. He said he&#8217;s already on his second data center job.<\/p>\n<p>He said the data center work often brings extra hours.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cA lot of these calls have overtime and more than just 40 hours,\u201d Hamilton said. \u201cA lot of them are paying double time, so there\u2019s a lot of money to be made out there.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Hamilton said he would encourage others to enter the field.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRight now is a good time to get in and start working for sure,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of opportunity, a lot of stuff to learn here.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The North Texas Electrical Training Alliance said apprentices can earn double pay at some jobs. Now, 10 times&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":471416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":["post-471415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=471415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/471415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/471416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=471415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=471415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=471415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}