Meta Launches US$115m Construction Academy

Meta has announced the America’s Workforce Academy, a nationwide trades academy to support the demand for skilled workers in the AI-led data centre construction boom. 

The academy will be funded by a US$115m budget for the first year, and the programme is cost-free for successful applicants. Meta also says it guarantees jobs for all those who graduate from the academy.

In what the tech giant is calling the largest private-sector commitment to the skilled trades with a job guarantee in American history, the academy will launch in Louisiana, Ohio, Indiana and Texas as the 2026 pilot locations. 

The initiative is being launched in partnership with the National Urban League, the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) and real estate services company CBRE. 

“The AI infrastructure we’re building today requires an incredible workforce to make it a reality,” says Rachel Peterson, Vice President of Data Centres at Meta. “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.

“America needs hundreds of thousands of skilled tradespeople: electricians, mechanics, fibre technicians and more. This programme creates clear, accessible pathways into those careers.”

Why is Meta launching training?

The AI data centre construction boom is driving unprecedented demand for skilled trades workers, such as fibre technicians, welders, electricians and plumbers across the whole of the US.  

At the moment there is a critical shortage of these workers, which is causing a bottleneck on the delivery of construction projects. It is no coincidence that Meta has big data centres in all four of the academy’s launch states. 

Meta’s confidence in the programme will likely be high after the overwhelming success of its recent Level-Up campaign, also launched with CBRE, which announced a number of academies across the US to train fibre technicians.

That training programme received 35,000 applications in the first seven days, suggesting strong demand from workers looking for accessible routes into skilled trades careers. 

“The AI revolution is bringing change but also historic opportunities,” says Dina Powell McCormick, President and Vice-Chairman of Meta. “Skilled workers electrified rural America one pole at a time. They manned the factories that built the arsenal that won World War II. 

“Now a new generation will pour the foundations and lay the fibre that secures American strength in this new age.”

How America’s Workforce Academy works

Like the Level-Up programme, CBRE will lead the candidate intake, qualification and hands-on training, with support from ABC. ABC will deliver training through its established network of nationwide education centres. 

Candidates are paid while they train and it costs nothing to enrol. Meta promises there is a job waiting for each successful candidate upon successful graduation from the academy.  

Graduates earn the National Center for Construction Education and Research (NCCER) credential, as well as an America’s Workforce Certificate. Both qualifications stay with them, wherever they go to work in the future. 

“This innovative talent pipeline solution addresses the industry’s ongoing workforce shortage by utilising ABC’s existing, proven, nationwide education ecosystem,” says Michael Bellaman, ABC president and Chief Executive Officer. 

“The sustained demand for data centre construction technicians means the industry needs an all-of-the-above approach to grow the construction talent pool.” 

What it means for construction

The data centre construction boom is creating demand for skilled trades workers at a scale the US construction industry has not seen before. 

AI infrastructure investment from Meta, Microsoft, Google and others is running into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and the construction industry simply does not have enough skilled workers to build it. 

For CBRE, workforce development has become as central to its data centre offer as real estate and project management. 

"We are leveraging the full scope and expertise of CBRE to recruit, train and deploy thousands of skilled workers who will support Meta in building out their AI infrastructure," says Bob Sulentic, Chair and Chief Executive Officer at CBRE.