The AI boom is creating data center jobs that pay more - Business Insider

Workers outside a data center during construction in Slough, UK Bloomberg/Getty Images 2026-08-08T12:00:01.250Z Read in app Save Saved Listen to this story This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? Log in . New research from Indeed shows that some of the fastest-growing tech jobs are now electricians, installers, maintenance workers, and engineers building the data centers that power AI. Data center job postings have more than doubled over the past two years, even as overall US job openings fell. Today, six out of every 1,000 US job postings are related to data centers, triple the share seen in 2023. The hiring is also spreading beyond Silicon Valley. Big tech companies are recruiting heavily in places such as Columbus, Ohio, Jackson, Mississippi, and Reno, Nevada, where their share of local job postings has surged. About one-quarter of all data center openings are for installation and maintenance workers, who can earn about $10 more per hour than similar jobs outside the industry. Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here . Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com .