As generative AI threatens to upend the white-collar workforce, it’s creating a surge of opportunity in one corner of the labor market: the skilled trades.
That’s at least according to Jon Gray, president and chief operating officer at Blackstone—the biggest publicly-traded alternative asset manager—who predicted a “huge boom in blue-collar employment certainly over the next five years.”
Speaking at the Milken Institute last week, Gray pointed to QTS, one of Blackstone’s portfolio companies, which operates or is developing more than 75 data centers worldwide.
A year ago, roughly 10,000 workers were on QTS job sites. By year’s end, that number is set to quadruple to 40,000—a 300% jump.
“Between the energy, the physical infrastructure, the data centers, the reindustrialization—something very powerful [is] happening,” Gray said.
The boom is being fueled by a massive wave of AI infrastructure investment. According to McKinsey, global spending on data centers could reach $7 trillion by 2030, creating lucrative opportunities for electricians, pipefitters, and HVAC technicians, helping build the facilities powering the AI economy. While data centers vary in size, a single data center can be 40% to 50% larger than an average Walmart Supercenter and require up to 1,500 workers during peak construction.
The average salary of construction workers on data center projects is about $81,800 annually or $39.33 an hour—roughly 32% more than those on non-data center builds—according to data from Skillit, an AI-powered hiring platform for construction workers.
Fortune reached out to Blackstone for further comment.
Companies are pouring millions into rebuilding the skilled trades talent pipeline
Despite the demand and rising pay, filling critical skilled-trade roles hasn’t been easy for companies racing to build out AI infrastructure.
An estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs in the U.S. could go unfilled by 2030—with potential economic losses reaching $1 trillion annually, according to U.S. Department of Education estimates cited in a report from JLL first shared exclusively with Fortune.
The shortage stems from a perfect storm: an aging workforce nearing retirement, decades of educational emphasis on four-year degrees over vocational pathways, and surging labor demand tied to data centers and industrial development.
Companies are increasingly stepping in to help rebuild the talent pipeline themselves.
Last month, the charitable arm of Blackstone announced a $3 million investment to launch Blackstone Skilled Futures, a workforce development initiative created in partnership with Arizona State University, Maricopa Community Colleges, and local nonprofits to expand skilled-trades training in the Phoenix. QTS currently has three data centers under development in the area.
Meanwhile, Lowe’s announced earlier this year that it plans to invest $250 million over the next decade to help train 250,000 people in skilled-trade fields like plumbing, carpentry, and electrical work. According to the home improvement giant’s CEO, Marvin Ellison, the investment is critical to rebuilding the U.S. workforce amid the AI-driven shift, and he argues more companies need to recognize the urgency.
“We’re a company that believes strongly in the future of AI,” Ellison told Fortune at the time. “But in a world where administrative and analytical occupations are going to be increasingly dominated with the acceleration of AI, we think the skilled-trade initiative is going to be even more important here in the near future.”
Asset manager BlackRock also announced this year that it would invest $100 million in skilled-trade training programs, deploying funds through nonprofits and workforce development partners across multiple states. The initiative aims to reach 50,000 workers over the next five years.
