Workers in America are eyeing blue-collar trades\u2014such as construction, plumbing, and steelwork\u2014with new interest.<\/p>\n
Even CEOs like Nvidia\u2019s\u00a0Jensen Huang\u00a0are on that list.\u00a0Huang recently predicted\u00a0<\/a>that the next wave of six-figure jobs won\u2019t come from Silicon Valley, but from the crews\u00a0building the data centers\u00a0powering it.<\/p>\n These jobs pay over $100,000, require no college degree, and are desperate for bodies: hundreds of thousands of electricians, laborers, and supervisors, with nowhere near enough people to fill the roles.<\/p>\n Skilled trades are already stretched thin, and the same shortage now competing for data center construction crews is\u00a0one more strain on a housing industry<\/a>\u00a0that can\u2019t build fast enough.<\/p>\n \u201cThe shrinking and aging construction labor force is a major issue in the homebuilding industry right now, leading to increased labor costs and longer construction timelines for new homes,\u201d says\u00a0Realtor.com\u00ae\u00a0senior economist\u00a0Joel Berner. \u201cWhere zoning may completely prevent some projects from being started, the labor shortage could prevent them from completed profitably and on time.\u201d<\/p>\n An aerial view shows the Meta El Paso Data Center on Thursday, August 13, 2026, in El Paso, Texas. Meta Platforms continues construction on its more than $10 billion facility, which has been expanded to 1 gigawatt of computing capacity to support AI workloads. (2026 Getty Images) Getty Images<\/p>\n So, the question becomes, can the country push its young workforce toward these jobs\u2014and will housing markets feel the difference as workers potentially move from data centers to homes?<\/p>\n It depends who you ask.<\/p>\n The labor needs of data centers<\/p>\n Huang\u2019s prediction is already playing out in paychecks. Workers moving into data center construction are seeing pay jumps of 25% to 30% over their previous jobs,\u00a0according to the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, and sometimes far more: An\u00a0Ohio\u00a0drywall contractor who took a supervisor role overseeing 200 workers at a data center site now makes over $100,000 a year, while an electrician managing crews across six sites in Northern\u00a0Virginia\u00a0<\/a>tops $200,000.<\/p>\n Those wages are a function of scarcity. Data center construction starts approached $80 billion nationally in 2025, nearly triple the previous year\u2019s figure,\u00a0according to ConstructConnect<\/a>. If this work is going to continue at pace, the industry will need more workers: The\u00a0Information Technology and Innovation Foundation<\/a>\u00a0puts the sector\u2019s worker shortage at roughly 439,000 people this year alone, specifically noting the lack of electricians, pipe layers, and HVAC techs.<\/p>\n And the buildout isn\u2019t confined to a few tech hubs\u2014much of the country is experiencing the data center boom. According to Realtor.com data, the\u00a0share of U.S. home sales within 5 miles of a data center\u00a0<\/a>is ticking up rapidly, with low-income areas seeing a particularly high influx.<\/p>\n \u201cTexas\u00a0and Virginia are home to the most current and proposed data centers, but\u00a0Georgia,\u00a0Pennsylvania, and Ohio are close behind,\u201d says Berner.\u00a0\u201cPennsylvania and Ohio especially could benefit from an influx of tradespeople as their homebuilding levels are lower than the Southern states mentioned here.\u201d<\/p>\n Homes are under construction at the Taylor Morrison Avalon at Cypress community on Monday, August 3, 2026, in Cypress, Texas. The Taylor Morrison acquisition complements the business Berkshire built through its ownership of Clayton. (Bloomberg) Bloomberg via Getty Images<\/p>\n What makes data center wages climb so high is who\u2019s paying for them: Meta, Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are spending billions of dollars on these projects. Homebuilders have no equivalent backer. They\u2019re selling into what buyers can actually afford, on far thinner margins, which limits how far they can chase the same workers upward.<\/p>\n The question is, if data centers can pull tradespeople in with pay homebuilders can\u2019t match, does any of that labor eventually flow back toward the country\u2019s other, more urgent construction problem?<\/p>\n Will residential housing construction reap the benefits?<\/p>\n