At a glance
- Data centres account for 13,000 of the 72,000 extra electrical and mechanical trades workers Australia needs by 2030. Housing accounts for 17,000.
- Powering Skills Organisation, the body that plans training for those trades, has carried its 2025 estimate of 42,000 forward unchanged and added the other two figures to it.
- Its data centre estimate is worked out by ratio from a 2024 study the operators commissioned, and it is the one figure the organisation says may be conservative.
- On its table the data centre trades workforce nearly doubles, from more than 15,000 in 2024 to 28,000 in 2030.
- New South Wales asks data centre developers to support training in exchange for a 75-day assessment commitment.
Powering Skills Organisation's 2026 workforce update
Australia needs an additional 72,000 electricians, technicians and related tradespeople by 2030, the ABC reported on 2 September 2026, citing a report from Powering Skills Organisation, the federally funded body that plans training for the energy trades. Those are the electricians, refrigeration mechanics and electronics workers who wire, cool and commission everything from a substation to the halls inside an AI data centre. The ABC set the figure against the 42,000 the organisation forecast a year earlier and named data centre construction as a key driver.
The number will be quoted at both data centre inquiries, in New South Wales reporting on 3 November and the Senate on 16 November. Electricians are already in shortage in every state and territory on Jobs and Skills Australia's rating, so what the 72,000 is made of decides how much of it falls on the industry.
The 72,000 is three figures added together, and data centres are the smaller of the two new ones. The clean energy build accounts for 42,000, carried forward unchanged from 2025. The Housing Accord adds 17,000 and data centres add 13,000. The organisation's 2026 Targeted Workforce Update, published in August as a progress review of its 2025 plan, gives each of the three separately and never states the total. Its homepage puts it in one line: "Australia needs 42,000 more energy trades by 2030, plus 17,000 for housing and 13,000 for data centres."
| What the workers are for | Extra workers by 2030 | Where the figure comes from |
|---|---|---|
| The clean energy build | 42,000 | Powering Skills Organisation, 2025, from Jobs and Skills Australia |
| The National Housing Accord | 17,000 | Housing Industry Association |
| Data centres | 13,000 | Powering Skills Organisation, from a 2024 industry study |
Source: Powering Skills Organisation, 2026 Targeted Workforce Update, August 2026.
Where the 42,000 came from
The 42,000 was produced for the organisation's 2025 workforce plan from Jobs and Skills Australia's clean energy generation report, under a high growth scenario in which Australia becomes a major clean energy exporter, and that plan modelled neither housing nor data centres. The 2026 update carries it forward and says the ground has moved underneath it: "the landscape has clearly shifted since those estimates were modelled." Replacement modelling with the University of Technology Sydney and the Race for 2030 research centre starts appearing in late 2027.
The housing figure comes from outside the organisation altogether. "Based on estimates from Housing Industry Association, the National Housing Accord could require an additional 17,000 energy trades workers," the update says, and with data centres "additional workforce requirements may have increased by more than 30,000". The update calls the result an energy supercycle, in which the net zero build, housing, the Future Made in Australia program and the 2032 Brisbane Games compete for the same trades at once.
How the update reaches 13,000 for data centres
The organisation estimates data centres used more than 15,000 energy trades workers in 2024 and will need 28,000 by 2030. Its table splits the 13,000 addition into 12,000 in construction and 1,000 in operations, the same lopsided shape as the sector's employment record. It gets there by ratio rather than by survey. The base is the October 2024 Mandala Partners study commissioned by AirTrunk, AWS, CDC, Microsoft and NEXTDC, which put the sector's operations workforce at 9,600 rising to 17,900 by 2030. The update then assumes fifteen construction workers for every operations job, and that one in ten workers in both groups is an energy trade.
"Though precise estimates have not yet been produced, more workers are expected during a data centre's construction phase," the update says, and it is the only one of the three figures it calls possibly conservative. The construction ratio is borrowed from the building industry as a whole, and the update warns that data centres are not typical buildings: electrical systems run to about 44 per cent of construction cost and mechanical systems a further 17 per cent, so the trades required "may differ from currently estimated levels". The report also carries an industry estimate that between 45 and 70 per cent of a data centre construction budget goes to electrical subcontractors. Everything the update flags points the same way, which is up.
The other two figures are handled differently. The housing 17,000 arrives with its source named and no method, base or caveat attached. The update publishes a 2024 starting workforce for data centres, which is what makes the doubling measurable, and publishes none for housing, so the trajectories cannot be compared. Its own outlook table rates data centres as driving both new skills and more workers, and rates the Housing Accord unlikely to change the skills the trades need.
Apprentices, and who pays to train them
Electrician apprentices complete at 70 per cent against a vocational training average of 56 per cent, and among the 20 largest apprenticeship occupations electricians record both the highest completion rate and the highest number of completions. The constraint is not people dropping out. It is how many start, and the 2025 plan put the requirement for the 42,000 alone at about 22,000 more apprentices in training, an increase of roughly 40 per cent.
Anthea Middleton, the organisation's chief executive, told the ABC that "we have multiple national priorities that are simultaneously competing for the same electricians, technicians and skilled trades workers" and that the pressure will persist for years. She said small and medium businesses carry the cost of training apprentices while large projects hire them near the end of their indenture, that the absence of guidelines to hire first- and second-year apprentices on major projects has "enabled a system of poaching", and she called for quotas. The update is running a study to quantify poaching, reporting by the middle of 2027, and it describes smaller electrical contractors as "the largest source of potential apprenticeship growth". Stewart Joyce, chief executive of the National Electrical and Communications Association, told the ABC he struggled to see how all the projects could be completed without a coordinated approach.
The roles the industry is advertising now are visible on the data centre jobs board, and the operators' own training intakes are counted in dozens rather than thousands. AirTrunk took 30 mechanical and electrical apprentices into a four-year program from May 2024. Microsoft's academy with Victoria University and TAFE NSW's at Meadowbank train data centre technicians and critical environment technicians, which are operations roles rather than the licensed trades the 13,000 counts. The largest single commitment is a state one, Victoria's SEC academy, which plans 2,000 electrical apprenticeships over four years from a first intake in January 2027.
New South Wales asks data centres to support training
New South Wales has written the same requirement into two instruments, both for other industries. Its procurement direction requires 20 per cent of trades positions on government construction contracts above A$10 million to go to apprentices. Its renewable energy sector board plan sets the same 20 per cent as a minimum for apprentices, and 20 per cent of the total project workforce for workers in training, on privately funded generation and storage projects bidding for a long-term energy contract or for access to a renewable energy zone. Those percentages are scored in the merit assessment rather than enforced as a threshold, so a bid below them loses points instead of being ruled out.
The state's data centre guidelines, released 17 August 2026, ask data centres for training support and price it in assessment days. Performance Measure 17 asks a proponent to "demonstrate support for training of workers involved in the construction and operation of data centres in NSW", which the guidelines say can include "opportunities for apprenticeships and learning workers, partnerships with recognised training providers such as TAFE NSW". A proponent that addresses the measures gets a commitment to an assessment process "taking no longer than 75 days in state government hands". No percentage attaches, so the developer decides what support means. The national expectations issued on 23 March 2026 use the same wording nationally, and are likewise a request.
Overseas, Illinois has required data centre operators claiming its tax exemption to use registered apprenticeship programs since 2019, and publishes no apprentice count against it. The clearest published result anywhere comes from the American collective training funds, where electrical contractors pay into a shared training pool, and an electrical union local in Northern Virginia lifted its intake from 300 to 500 apprentices a course on data centre demand. Britain's broad payroll apprenticeship levy ran the other way, with starts falling after it began in 2017 and never returning to earlier levels, and no national apprenticeship register carries a data centre trades qualification, which puts Australia level with every other market on that point.
What to watch
Both inquiries can ask whether a training commitment should carry a figure, and New South Wales has already written the wording twice for other industries. The organisation's poaching study reports by the middle of 2027 and its replacement modelling starts appearing late in the same year, ahead of a full workforce plan. Jobs and Skills Australia's 2026 occupation shortage list will show whether electricians remain in shortage in all eight jurisdictions. The clearest test of the 13,000 will be the update's own survey work, since the figure now rests on a ratio applied to a study the industry paid for two years ago.