Tens of thousands of construction workers are flocking to a small community in Louisiana to build Meta's largest data center ever.
At the West Monroe campus of Louisiana Delta Community College ( Louisiana Delta Community College ), which is less than an hour's drive away, the next generation of data center professionals are eager to join their ranks.
27-year-old Eric Crowe Jr told Business Insider, "I think AI is indeed the future. We will need data centers to store all this data."
“I think this could become a very profitable job, and we will need more people like this in the future. Why not get into this industry now, before it becomes overly saturated?” he said.
Crowe Jr is one of the students enrolled in the "Data Center Technician" program at this community college. This four-week training course, which costs nearly $3,700, is designed to help students enter the data center industry. With the arrival of the AI era, this industry is rapidly expanding.
A data center covering nearly 10 million square feet, Meta, is currently under construction in the rural parish of Richland ( Richland Parish ) in Louisiana, Hyperion. As workers flock to the site, local commerce has also become increasingly bustling.
Meta indicates that during the peak construction period, there will be over 7,500 skilled workers on site, and after completion, it will support 1,000 operational positions. For the residents living in this area, such new opportunities are hard to ignore – there is no state minimum wage law locally, agriculture is the main industry, and this growing sector is expected to bring decent incomes.
The director of labor skills training at Louisiana Delta Community College, Dan McCarty, said, "This is a springboard to the real world. We will help you prepare your resume. We will provide training in various aspects such as employability, safety, and technical skills."
The first batch of students graduated in March, and all 11 students received job offers from IES Communications. This company has hired staff who participated in the Meta project. McCarty mentioned that this project is currently offered at the Winthrop campus ( Winnsboro campus ), and it now trains about 24 graduates per month.
McCarty said, "In the past, many people, including myself, had to leave here in order to find better jobs. Now, those jobs are just within a 30-minute drive away."
"There's no need to think too much about it at all."
The "Data Center Technician" program teaches students various aspects ranging from equipment operation to workplace safety, and students also have the opportunity to obtain multiple certifications. In a class in September of this year, 9 students gathered around the lecturer Fletch Batchelor who specializes in broadband technology to listen to him explain how to fuse fiber optic cables.
Batchelor joked, "Do you know why squirrels bite through cables? Because they prefer a high-fiber diet." This statement caused a wave of laughter.
The project encourages students to engage in hands-on practice, and 30-year-old Trey Wadley says that this is exactly what he values. In class, he participated in a live cable welding demonstration. Wadley is interested in network security and has a background in the automotive industry. He said that he learned about this project while browsing Facebook, and Facebook happens to be owned by Meta.
He said, "As I learned more about Meta and data centers, I began to become interested in them. I thought to myself, 'Well, this might be something suitable for me and something that I would be interested in.' So I decided to give it a try."
Wadley just had a daughter recently, and he hopes to find a job in the Meta project so that he can work locally. He said that without this Meta project, he would most likely go to Texas in search of job opportunities.
Tech companies and the U.S. government are pushing to build a nationwide AI infrastructure, making data center jobs a new path to high-income employment. A report by Business Insider in August stated that the median salary for data center facility managers is $134,000, which is 64% higher than that of other facility managers. The median salary for data center facility project managers is $115,000, which is 12% higher than similar positions in other facilities.
Wadley indicates that he hopes to find a job with an hourly wage between $25 and $30. Crowe Jr also has the same expectation. He previously worked at FedEx (FedEx) handling packages and as a driver, with an average hourly wage of about $14.
Crowe Jr said, "Here, I can earn about $25 to $30 per hour. For many people, changing careers is not something they need to think about at all." He also mentioned that he is interested in cybersecurity.
McCarty said that the starting salary for entry-level positions can reach up to $24 per hour, but the graduates told him that they could earn between $27 and $28 per hour within 6 months.
So busy that I can't catch my breath.
Like in other communities in the United States, residents of the Richland parish have mixed opinions about this data center. Some say it will bring new jobs and boost the local economy, while others are concerned about its environmental impact and the disruption to daily life.
Crowe Jr and Wadley are both aware of this reality, but they suggest that AI is unlikely to just disappear like that.
Wadley said, "I think we should pay more attention to solutions and consider how to coexist with them."
Students who participated in the September technician course also practiced in a simulated data center on campus, applying the skills learned in class in an environment that was closer to real-world work.
While the students were fiddling with the devices, John Bradley, a lecturer on broadband labor force development, mentioned that it would have been incredibly valuable if he had had access to similar projects when he was in his teens.
He said, "At that time, I took another path and entered the construction industry and the oil field sector. But if there had been such a project back then that could guarantee me a good job and a decent income from the start, and if I had also been able to work in other places if I wished, I would have definitely loved it very much."
Bradley said that the graduates trained through this program are exactly the kind of talents needed by the contractors involved in the Meta project.
He said, "We have a dedicated email address that we provide to the different contractors we have worked with, and they are all waiting for these students to graduate from our program."
However, working at Meta is not a prerequisite for participating in the project. Bradley states that the skills learned by students in the course are transferable, especially as positions in data centers and similar buildings are becoming increasingly popular.
Bradley said, 'It's not necessarily that it has to be Meta's data center. You might also decide, 'I don't want to work in a data center anymore.' You could also go to a bank, or you could join the IT department. You can almost work anywhere you want, using the same skills you've learned here.'
McCarty said that students who want to enroll in this course have already formed a long queue, so they hope to expand the enrollment scale.
He said, "Some of our students have just graduated from high school, but we also have students who are 60 years old. The age at which you decide to enter this industry is not really important. Everyone is welcome to learn."
