America’s data center boom is not just a story about Big Tech, AI, and infrastructure. It is also a workplace story for the electricians asked to wire the facilities that make the boom possible.
As companies put billions of dollars into data center construction, electrical workers are finding new opportunities, tighter timelines, and sharper ethical questions. For some, the work is simply work. For others, the job site has become a place where the future of AI, local communities, and labor politics collide.
Data center construction is creating a labor scramble
The source of the tension is straightforward: Big Tech is building aggressively, and those projects need skilled tradespeople. Large data centers require extensive electrical work, and the scale of the buildout has opened valuable opportunities for electricians.
In some cases, the size of the projects and the pressure to finish them quickly are fueling talent wars for experienced workers. The US-based International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers has argued that its members are “powering the AI Revolution,” while a set of “Data Center Principles” published in March says union labor is “essential to the future of AI.”
Tech companies are also trying to expand the pipeline. Meta recently announced a skilled trade academy program, and Google committed $50 million to help train people in skilled trades.
That creates a powerful pull. Data center work can mean access to major projects, new experience, and in some cases a chance to move into different roles. But as national opposition to data centers grows, some electricians are asking whether the paycheck comes with a moral cost.
The ethical debate is moving into the trade
Inside parts of the electrician community, AI and data center construction are no longer abstract topics. Threads about AI and its effect on the economy now appear on r/electricians, a subreddit with around half a million monthly visitors.
The concerns vary. Some users ask whether AI could eventually cause widespread job losses. Others question whether working on data centers makes electricians complicit in harm to local communities. Some ask directly whether it is unethical to take the work at all.
There is no single answer. One electrician based in the Midwest told WIRED he no longer tells people what he does for a living. As a “single guy attempting to date,” he said “the conversation shifts or gets shut down altogether” when he explains his work. He recalled people telling him “how terrible it is that you’re contributing to something like that.”
“That's usually the last time you hear from them,” he said. Like others who spoke to WIRED, he requested anonymity because he is not authorized to speak to reporters.
His own view is complicated. He has worries about scams and about how “corporate greed” could hurt workers. But he also deliberately sought out a data center job and was willing to take a pay cut to get started. After being hired as an electrician, he was promoted to a management role within months and hopes to eventually move into engineering.
“I did just see it as, ‘Well, this is most likely going to be a major part of our future. And if you can't beat them, join them,” he said.
Some electricians refuse the work
Other electricians draw a firmer line. Ryan, an electrician who has never worked at a data center, told WIRED he probably never will. His concerns are political as well as economic.
“I think world governments, not just our own, are becoming more right-wing and more fascistic,” he said. He does not trust corporations operating in that environment and described executives like Elon Musk and Alex Karp as “suspicious at best.”
Ryan said he might think differently if AI were clearly headed toward benevolent use. Instead, he sees the industry as resembling “four or five AI companies just exchanging money with each other in a circle.” He is also concerned about the AI bubble.
As an IBEW worker, Ryan has some ability to choose. He can accept or reject jobs offered through the union. He said his branch occasionally offers small jobs at local data centers, and so far those have been easy for him to avoid. Even if he were out of work for a long time, he said it would still be “really tough to want to take that job call.” He said he would also refuse other jobs he sees as unethical, including work at private prisons.
Still, Ryan’s position is not anti-union. “if they're going to get built, I'd rather they go union,” he said.
Others separate the project from the paycheck
Many electricians see the issue differently. Jesse, an IBEW electrician, told WIRED he has concerns about community pushback to data centers, especially when projects significantly harm nearby residents.
“I think it's ridiculous if, to build a data center or any kind of a business, you're going to significantly impact the lives of that community in a negative way,” Jesse said. But he argued that those problems should be addressed by contacting state and local governments, not by blaming electricians who need the work.
That view is common in the debate. Data center construction is driven by forces far larger than one worker. From that perspective, judging an individual electrician for taking the job misses where the real power sits.
Dante, an electrician who told WIRED he has worked on data centers operated by Intel, HP, and Amazon, put the point bluntly. “Nobody judges me” for data center work, he said, because “we're almost always working for the worst possible people in the end, but we all need a paycheck because of the unlivable world that those same rich people have created for us.”
He described data center work as part of a broader pattern. “Either I'm wiring up a lumber mill or a Dollar General warehouse or a data center or an Amazon facility or whatever else,” Dante said. It is “essentially the same kind of work—all for already extremely rich pieces of shit to use for the exploitation of the working class so they can get more rich.”
The debate is really about agency
The hardest question is not whether every electrician agrees on data centers. They clearly do not. The harder question is how much responsibility individual workers should carry when the projects they build are shaped by corporate strategy, local politics, and the need for income.
One electrician told WIRED that job scarcity can create an attitude that workers should be free from criticism because they “have to put food on the table.” Challenging that view, the electrician said, “would not end well at a union hall.” Privately, though, they reject it.
“If work is tight and a company comes in and wants to build orphan-crushing machines (or some other diabolical contrivance), you'll get a lot of shrugged shoulders, grim faces, and ‘I hope they pay double for overtime,’” the electrician said. “It's an attitude I hate.”
An apprentice described hearing similar reasoning in professional development groups. “I've participated in some professional development groups where different degrees of compartmentalization are deployed to justify the work, usually landing on ‘It's going to be built no matter what, I might as well get paid,’” they told WIRED. They believe some people will always treat pay as enough justification, “regardless of what the project is.”
Then they added the caveat that sits at the center of the entire debate: “But of course that's easy for me to say,” the apprentice said, “because my livelihood doesn't depend on them.”
That tension is why data center jobs have become such a revealing labor issue. They offer electricians real opportunities in a fast-growing part of the economy. They also force workers to decide how they think about AI, corporate power, community harm, union labor, and the meaning of ethical work when refusing a job is easier for some people than for others.