Meta president and vice chairman Dina Powell McCormick is sounding the alarm: the United States needs roughly half a million new electricians in the next two years if it wants to keep up with artificial intelligence.
Speaking today, McCormick warned that the country will need a whole new workforce to build out the physical backbone of AI, from sprawling data centers to new substations and charging networks. The timing is not subtle, coming as Meta races ahead with a multibillion-dollar effort to secure the computing power and energy its AI plans demand.
McCormick cast the electrician shortfall as a test of national competitiveness and workforce policy, calling them the real heroes who are building the very infrastructure that will help us win, as reported by Axios. In an interview at Axios' AI+DC Summit, she argued that fast public-private training programs and expanded apprenticeships will be essential. Axios also notes she joined Meta full time in January to help steer government and sovereign partnerships around infrastructure.
Meta Compute And The Gigawatt Buildout
To organize its AI infrastructure push, Meta rolled out a new initiative called “Meta Compute” in January. The program is designed to pull together the company’s data center, chip and energy investments into one top-level effort as its AI systems scale up.
Coverage at TechCrunch reported CEO Mark Zuckerberg saying Meta plans to build tens of gigawatts of compute this decade, with executives now zeroed in on locking down sites, chips and reliable power. Meta Compute centralizes the teams that source equipment and push approvals through processes that have traditionally slowed hyperscale data center rollouts.
Meta Secures Power, Tests Local Capacity
Meta has already started locking in the electricity for that kind of buildout. The company has signed long-term energy agreements that could provide as much as 6.6 gigawatts of nuclear capacity along with other firm power resources for its AI clusters, according to Meta's newsroom.
Analysts say that pairing aggressive construction schedules with massive power contracts will put fresh pressure on local permitting offices and regional labor pools as AI hubs like Prometheus and Hyperion come online. Reporting from Fortune details the scale of Meta's capital commitments and the size of its infrastructure bet.
A Shortage Of Skilled Workers
The labor gap McCormick is talking about is not hypothetical. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that about 818,700 electricians were employed in 2024 and projects roughly 81,000 openings per year over the coming decade, a sign that the existing pipeline will have to widen quickly to match rising demand.
Industry groups such as the National Electrical Contractors Association are already lobbying for more apprenticeships, easier-to-transfer credentials and more public money for trade school capacity to keep crews staffed up. Hitting McCormick's two-year target would require unusually rapid scaling of training, recruiting and licensing across multiple states.
McCormick argued that building this workforce will be as strategically important as any chip order, urging executives and policymakers to treat electricians and line crews as critical to national competitiveness, the real heroes, she said, per Axios. Whether that message turns into new federal programs, state incentives or industry-led bootcamps, the outcome will decide whether the United States can turn the AI compute race into jobs and projects that actually materialize on the ground.
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