How to overcome staff shortages in the data center industry with skilled workers

Key points:

We often refer to the “silver tsunami” in the data center industry, referring to the rising wave of older employees who are set to retire and leave the workforce in the next five years or less.

It is a real challenge, especially since the industry is already facing a shortage of qualified talent. According to research by Uptime InstituteBy 2025, the global data center industry will need 2.3 million full-time employees. Many data center providers will struggle to attract, hire, and retain all the employees their companies need to maintain operations and support growth objectives.

It might be a manageable situation if our industry were slowing down or even stagnating. However, the global data center industry continues to see extremely high demand for hosting, data storage, computing, and managed services, driven in part by ai. Consider also that hyperscale data center providers (companies like AWS, Microsoft, and Google) can attract more tech talent, making it even harder for other data center operators to hire people with the technical and mechanical skills to keep our systems running.

All of this highlights the growing need for a specialized (yet often overlooked) group of employees: skilled workers.

Demand for professionals in data centers

Why focus on trades rather than those employees with more traditional credentials or a background in the technology industry?

The first answer is that data centers tend to need employees with experience in specialized skills, allowing them to hit the ground running. These include positions like electricians, mechanics, heating and cooling technicians, construction workers, and more.

These employees can offer technical and mechanical skills and other expertise to keep mission-critical data center systems running. It’s a major advantage in an industry hyper-focused on providing the highest levels of uptime for customers—to the point where many operators must meet “five-digit” service-level agreements (99.999 percent uptime). Often, the right employees can make all the difference, whether it’s a technician who spots a potential server problem before it becomes a problem or a versatile mechanic who can quickly repair a diesel generator.

Ideally, high schools, vocational schools and community colleges would have programs to introduce students to a potential career in the data center industry and even provide basic training to get them started on that path. The manufacturing sector has had success with similar initiatives, helping it overcome past misconceptions and recruit younger generations to fill its own workforce shortages.

The data center industry could take a similar approach, especially when it comes to raising awareness about employees’ earning potential. Many students may believe they won’t earn as much as their peers with college or even graduate degrees. This isn’t true. Today, a growing cohort of data center employees without college degrees earn six-figure salaries, impressive benefits, and job security that may not exist at other tech companies.

A growing focus on veterans

Many data center companies have had significant success hiring military veterans. For these types of positions, veterans are often a good fit because they bring a wealth of specialized experience related to working with a wide range of specialized technologies, machinery, and equipment. They also have a proven track record of working in groups where everyone puts aside their individual role to sacrifice and support the overall mission of the organization.

Veterans bring a unique type of discipline that most data centers need when it comes to following instructions or supporting rigid protocols. We also encourage them to share their opinions or recommendations on processes that could be managed in a different way. We have many examples where our military veteran employees have challenged the status quo and offered new and innovative solutions to improve our business operations.

A new competitive advantage

Finding the next generation of employees is a real challenge today and can seem insurmountable for many data center operators. By challenging old ways of thinking and embracing a new segment of workers – skilled workers – many data centers can leapfrog the competition and gain a valuable new advantage.