Why Indiana Leaders Need to Pay Attention to the Trades Shortage Exposed by AI Data Center Growth

The AI boom is everywhere in the headlines: multibillion-dollar investments, lucrative talent battles for engineers, and relentless hype about who will “win” the next tech race. But what’s been mostly missing from that conversation is this: AI cannot be built or maintained without skilled tradespeople.

That’s the clear message from a recent WIRED article, “The Real AI Talent War Is for Plumbers and Electricians.”(Caroline Haskins, Jan 2026)

Read that sentence again. Not engineers, not coders, not data scientists—plumbers. Electricians. HVAC techs. The people who keep machines powered, buildings safe, and critical infrastructure functioning.

That matters for Indiana, deeply. This is also an issue that belongs on Governor Mike Braun’s radar, as Indiana’s long-term economic growth depends on a workforce that can actually build and maintain what we’re recruiting.

Indiana is now a center of data-center investment

Between Google’s major build in Fort Wayne and Meta’s massive campus at River Ridge, Indiana isn’t just in the data-center conversation. We’re now one of the states manufacturing the physical future of AI.

That’s good for jobs, good for investment, and good for community growth—if we have the workforce to support it.

But we don’t have enough skilled tradespeople

The WIRED piece highlights something workforce analysts have been warning about for years: there are simply not enough electricians, plumbers, HVAC techs, and construction supervisors to build and maintain this infrastructure.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics, McKinsey, unions, and employer groups all point to a continuing shortfall of trained workers—well before we even factor in AI data centers.

This isn’t some distant “skills gap” that will fix itself. It’s a workforce crunch that’s already here, and it threatens to slow economic growth and make Indiana less competitive, not more.

This is not a training problem — it’s a visibility and exposure problem

Here’s the part most people miss: the shortage didn’t appear because kids suddenly stopped pursuing trades. It shows up because many of them never saw the trades as a real option in the first place.
One moment makes this painfully clear: I spoke at a career day last week with 3rd–5th graders. One kid had never touched a drill. Another talked about helping their dad install gutters on weekends. Same classroom. Same zip code. Two very different worlds.

If we wait until students reach high school or college to introduce these paths, it’s already too late. Decisions have been made, perceptions have formed, and the pipeline has dried up.

Why Indiana leaders must pay attention now

For Indiana’s leadership—especially organizations like the Indiana Economic Development Corporation (IEDC), the River Ridge Development Authority, and the Office of the Secretary of Commerce—this is not a staffing problem. It’s a strategic economic priority.

Here’s why:

1. Workforce shortages slow economic growth.
If data centers and other industries can’t find the tradespeople they need, projects get delayed, costs rise, and companies look elsewhere.

2. Indiana’s competitive advantage is its mix of logistics, talent, and quality of life.
But that advantage disappears if one of the foundational workforces—the trades—is disappearing.

3. The pipeline starts early.
Exposure to the trades needs to start in elementary and middle school, not after high school graduation. If leadership doesn’t invest in visibility for these careers now, the pipeline will never be deep enough.

4. Pipeline investments aren’t just charity—they’re economic infrastructure.
Schools, parents, communities, and employers need a coordinated approach to build a talent ecosystem rooted in reality, not assumptions.

Raise the Trades is doing something practical

At Raise the Trades, we’re focused on early exposure and real outcomes. Through hands-on career days and community events, we bring skilled trades into classrooms and local centers before students decide what “success” is supposed to look like.

We’re not building training programs.
We’re fixing the gap upstream so that training programs, apprenticeships, and employers actually have people to reach.

The future isn’t built by buzzwords

No matter how loud the AI hype gets, no algorithm runs without electricity. No server rack gets installed without someone who knows how to wire it. No cooling system works without someone who understands airflow and amps.

If Indiana wants its fair share of this economic growth—and if we want those benefits to stick in our communities—we must stop pretending that the trades will take care of themselves.

We need visibility.
We need early exposure.
We need coordinated action.
We need leadership that recognizes this isn’t optional.

Because the future doesn’t get built in a coding bootcamp.
It gets built by the people who know how to do the work.