Dycom is building a 49-acre fake town to train unskilled workers for $62K data center jobs

No experience, nary problem. Dycom Industries, a institution that contracts for information halfway companies, is gathering a 49-acre fake municipality (1) successful Monroe, Georgia — 1 wherever caller hires signifier commercialized skills successful a realistic setting. It broke crushed successful April and is expected to unfastened mid-2027.

The goal: to bid up a skilled commercialized workforce, adjacent if that means starting from scratch.

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“You’re truly taking — I usage the joke, but it’s not truly a gag due to the fact that I person 2 assemblage kids — the kid playing XBOX astatine location connected his couch,” said Dan Peyovich, CEO of Dycom, to Fortune (2).

The buildout is portion of the company’s propulsion into information centers, a booming business. In 2025, Dycom completed the acquisition (3) of information halfway contractor Power Solutions. In its Q3 study (4), Dycom highlights however the acquisition “adds important skilled labour capacity” to its operations.

As AI eats the world, blue-collar employers similar Dycom are getting originative to pull the adjacent procreation of tradespeople. Dycom offers caller employees 2 weeks paid abrogation connected time one. Many connection high-paying, debt-free opportunities to unskilled young radical — and it’s working.

The trades called, they privation you

Competition for skilled tradespeople is hitting tiny outfits hard. Scotty Wristen, the proprietor of WE Electric successful Abilene, has switched to hiring apprentices consecutive retired of precocious school.

“They’re new; they don’t adjacent person a acceptable of tools,” Wristen told the Texas Tribune (5). “It’s usually astir 4 oregon 5 months of hellhole wherever we person small mistakes that outgo america clip and money.”

He already mislaid 5 workers to companies gathering information centers similar Stargate successful Texas. The data-center builders offered wage and benefits Wristen couldn’t match.

It’s not conscionable tiny shops — everyone is struggling to find skilled tradespeople. An investigation (6) by Randstad called skilled trades the “bottleneck” that threatened AI-powered growth. The survey recovered it present takes longer to prosecute a skilled electrician oregon HVAC idiosyncratic than a accepted table worker. That’s because, compared to table jobs, request for skilled-trades is increasing 3 times faster.

Big players are gathering their ain pipelines. In 2025, Carrier Global Corporation launched an inaugural (7) to prosecute implicit 1,000 work technicians successful the U.S. and bid 100,000 more. The inaugural follows connected the heels of Carrier University, which launched successful 2024 to bid up HVAC workers.