In New Albany, Ohio, just outside Columbus, an ambitious data center project by Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, is taking shape. Known as Prometheus, the project is expected to come online later this year as a key part of the company’s investment in artificial intelligence infrastructure to the tune of several hundred billion dollars.
Now, the big tech company also wants to train the electricians, plumbers, fiber technicians and other skilled trade workers who will build these behemoths in Ohio and across the country.
In June, Meta announced America’s Workforce Academy, a free four-week program that will provide basic training in the construction profession, in collaboration with real estate giant CBRE, the Associated Builders and Contractors, and local partners.
Meta has committed an initial $115 million for the academy, which is piloting in Columbus, Ohio, as well as in Indiana, Texas and Louisiana, all states where the company is building hyperscale data centers. The first cohorts in Columbus and Indianapolis graduated in early August, according to the company. Meta said every graduate of the program will receive a certificate from the National Center for Construction Education and Research and a job at a Meta data center construction site.
“The AI infrastructure we’re building today requires an incredible workforce to make it a reality,” said Rachel Peterson, Meta’s vice president for data centers, in a news release. “America’s Workforce Academy is our commitment to building that workforce with the same ambition and long-term thinking we bring to the technology itself.”
The academy comes at a turning point for the American labor force, as sectors that require skilled labor grapple with an aging population and a lack of interest in trades. The construction industry will need 456,000 new workers next year, according to data from ABC. Several other companies, including Google, OpenAI and BlackRock, have also made pledges to bridge this gap through grants, programs and partnerships.
“Columbus had a workforce shortage before the data center boom even happened, and with the data center boom, the shortage is almost at crisis level,” Barton Hacker, president of ABC’s Central Ohio chapter, said. “It’s almost like a job suck to the data centers: Now the workers that are needed to build your Wendy’s or your office building or your hospitals or your schools — now there’s a shortage that’s even greater because they’re all going to data centers.”
The race to build data centers has been a boon for the commercial construction industry, driving growth in the sector even as residential construction is slow to recover from the pandemic. The number of non-residential building construction employees surpassed residential builders in December for the first time since 2020, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Hacker, whose organization is partnering with Meta for the Columbus pilot, said the academy will provide an introduction for people to get started on a construction job, including safety training.
It will also be an easy entry point for more people, like new graduates or those looking for a career change, to enter the trades, Hacker said. He anticipates high demand for the program. Meta said a different training program on fiber installation received 35,000 applications in a week after it launched in April.
America’s Workforce Academy’s arrival in Ohio adds another wrinkle to the wider debate around data centers in the state.
As Meta, Amazon, Google and other companies poured more than $27 billion into building data centers in the state in 2025, residents have voiced concerns about the projects’ impact on utility costs and the environment. Several municipalities, including Cleveland, have put moratoriums on data center projects. Gov. Mike DeWine has also paused Ohio’s data center tax exemption while the state studies the sector.
The issue could be pivotal in the November elections, as Democrats are making the Republican incumbents’ eagerness to welcome data centers to the state a central plank of their efforts to retake the governor’s mansion and a Senate seat. Amy Acton, the Democratic gubernatorial challenger, has called for all data centers in the state to only use union workers, as well as guardrails on energy use and environmental impacts.
About 60% of Ohio registered voters disapprove of data center construction in their community, and more than 70% support a moratorium on new projects, according to a Bowling Green State University/YouGov survey in April.
Business and industry leaders in the Columbus area say the academy, along with Meta’s data center investments, will provide a big boost to the region’s workforce and economy. “It’s going to create opportunities for hundreds of people in Ohio to get great careers and great-paying jobs, and potentially go, become an entrepreneur, and own their own business over time,” Steve Stivers, president and CEO of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, said.
Still, the academy has raised questions about how it compares to apprenticeships — the years-long programs, usually run by unions, that are the primary path into the trades — and has expressed concerns about what will happen when the data center buildout slows.
The weeks-long academy is not enough training to create a highly skilled workforce equivalent to union workers, said Bailey Sandin, a researcher at the progressive think tank Policy Matters Ohio.
“While investment in making careers in the trades more accessible to communities is worthwhile, the real family-sustaining careers with great benefits still come from registered apprenticeship programs where workers are paid to learn a trade over years on the job,” Sandin said in a statement.
The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 683, the union representing workers in the electrical industry in the Columbus area, did not respond to a request for an interview.
But program leaders said this criticism misses the point of the academy.
“This program is not a destination. It is a waypoint, a starting point, and you get some entry-level, stackable credentials that will guarantee you a job. But there’ll be a lot of on-the-job training that happens after this for a lot of these people — they’ll continue to learn for a long time,” Stivers said.
As the frenzy over artificial intelligence’s effects on white-collar jobs sends chills through the economy — even Meta itself was not immune, having laid off 8,000 people in May — AI leaders are leaning into the demand for trade workers spurred by the infrastructure buildout.
“Electricians, plumbers, iron workers, technicians, builders — this is your time,” Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, said in a commencement speech this year.
Michael Horrigan, the president of the W.E. Upjohn Institute, has been researching how AI will affect different jobs and tasks. In a recent study, Horrigan and his co-author found that 97.5% of workers in the construction and extraction occupation group fall within the lowest of four quartiles based on AI exposure.
“We’re still going to get construction jobs no matter what,” Horrigan said.
He added that, as the country moves closer to a demographic cliff, companies will become more incentivized to train skilled workers themselves, and a key will be to ensure that these programs are market-oriented and link directly to the company’s hiring needs.
Hacker of ABC said there still needs to be a conversation around data center construction in Ohio. Nonetheless, he said he hopes and thinks America’s Workforce Academy can move the conversation in a positive direction.
“We’re being bombarded right now with ‘AI is going to take our jobs.’ Well, this is an actual example of the AI boom and the data center boom creating tens of thousands of jobs,” he said. “This is a direct investment in people.”
