Loading ...Kids don’t need to learn to code. They need to learn to build things.
the Rumors JOBAPOCALYPSE due to AI are greatly exagerated
Jeff Childers :
Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal ran a terrific story headlined, “Data Centers Are a ‘Gold Rush’ for Construction Workers.” The sub-headline explained, “Surging demand means six-figure pay and more perks.”
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SEE THE FIRST COMMENT FOR A BLOCKBUSTER PIECE THAT WILL KNOCK SOME SENSE INTO EVEN THE MOST BLACK PILLED AI DOOMSTERS
I DONT KNOW ABOUT YOU ALL BUT I AM SICK AND TIRED OF ALL THE DOOMSTER ! WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE (AND COVID)
SHEESH CAPICHE
AND ANOTHER THING
FUCK “HIGHER EDUCATION” WHICH PRODUCES USELESS INDOCTRINATED SPOILED FUCKING IDIOTS…SEND YOUR KIDS AND GRAND KIDS TO TRADE SCHOOL . INSTEAD OF COMING HOME IN 4 YEARS AS FUCKING LITTLE ANGRY COMMUNISTS WITH A LIFETIME OF DEBT AROUND THEIR NECKS THEY WILL COME HOME IN A YEAR DEBT FREE WITH A SENSE OF ACCOMPLISHMENT PURPOSE AND PROSPECTS FOR A FULL FUTURE
DOUBLE SHEESH
Say what you like about Trump’s Artificial Intelligence moonshot. Feel free to gloomily speculate about entry-level jobs being eventually washed away by chatbots. But out in the real world, Trump’s AI project is actually delivering a gold rush of high-paying jobs— right now and for the predictable future.
“I pinch myself going to work every day,” gushed DeMond Chambliss, 51, who used to hang residential drywall when he could get work. “It’s like the gold rush,” he added, awed.
Marc Benner, who is 60, is pulling down $225,000 a year as an electrical safety inspector. “It’s my American dream,” Benner glowed. There simply aren’t enough construction workers around to satisfy the demand, so wages are booming, as the competition for labor gets white-hot. “There’s a labor arms race taking place in the world of artificial intelligence,” explained ABC’s chief economist Anirban Basu.
“In this industry, stability is a really big thing,” said Michael Damme, 43, who is now earning $200,000 a year overseeing concrete construction. “When I first started in the trades, you had to save up all your money in the event you had to sit for a month or two with no work,” Damme explained. But not now. “It’s increased my pay tremendously,” reported Andrew Mason, 53, an electrician who is making more than $200,000 a year overseeing around 325 workers at six data centers.
Even brand-new electricians are making $27 an hour as apprentices, and then start at $60 an hour as soon as they graduate from training.
“There aren’t enough people to build the magnitude of the work out there right now,” one contractor explained. “There’s only a set pool to pull from, and every general contractor in the country is trying to pull from it right now.”
That demand doesn’t just affect wages for workers in AI construction. Other industries must compete for the same pool of construction workers. So the effect is national, transcending geography or industry.
? One recruiter quoted for the story said that workers who shift into the data-center industry —from electricians to project managers— earn +25% to +30% more than they did before. “Data centers are ballooning in size,” the Journal reported, “and a single project can take years to construct and require thousands of workers.”
Blue-collar workers are even being offered perks they’ve only ever dreamed of before, like heated and air-conditioned break tents, free lunches, bonuses, remote work (for positions like project managers), and paid time off.
Tech giants like Amazon, Google, and Microsoft currently operate 522 data centers with another 411 in development. And it is just getting started. Once a hyperscale data center goes online, it reliably triggers three even bigger layers of follow-on development.
First are the direct support businesses, like maintenance firms (think HVAC, electrical, generator servicing), fiber and network providers, fuel suppliers, security contractors, landscape businesses, and staffing services.
Secondary development includes nearby hotels to serve the constant churn of technical visitors and vendors, quick-service restaurants and retail, light industrial and warehouses, office buildings, and training centers and trade schools. Thousands of workers will be involved for several years to bring each center online.
Data centers don’t just run servers. They bend local real estate around them like gravity.
In the longer term, there will be substantial residential growth near a hyperscale data center. It’s not that many workers are needed in the data center itself — those figures are shockingly low compared to its footprint — but in all the support infrastructure. Not only that, but in order to recruit a big data center, local counties must upgrade much of their existing infrastructure, like water, sewer, roads, and electricity, in what economists call the “utility uplift effect.”
Finally, data centers pay lots of local taxes, but use few services. Those additional tax revenues fund new schools, parks, roads, emergency services, and zoning improvements, all of which turbocharge local housing growth, which requires yet more contractors, electricians, builders, and so on.
Data centers don’t find cities that can support them; they build them out because of the support networks and infrastructure that must grow around them.
The public debate over AI focuses mostly on its effects on Wall Street—stock prices, white-collar jobs, coders—but overlooks the massive building boom driving up wages and quality of living on Main Street.
Kids don’t need to learn to code. They need to learn to build things.
Have a blessed Sunday! Thank you, once again, for your continuing loyal support. We’ll gather together again tomorrow morning —in December!— to kick off the last month of 2025 with a new roundup of essential news and commentary.
The work is hard but the comradery can be great, job site antics can be a hoot to make the day enjoyable, rock n roll on the radio and the great outdoors. I remember this dead mouse that would come back to haunt me now and again, what comes around , goes around was the game. Definitely more crazy memories than what the office could pump out.