AI boom’s demand for skilled workers could hit housing pipelineExclusive by political reporter Ewa Staszewska
Posted Wed 2 Sep 2026 at 5:48amWed 2 Sep 2026 at 5:48amWed 2 Sep 2026 at 5:48am
In short:
Australia is falling short of the workers required to power both the nation’s AI boom and housing targets.
The Powering Skills Organisation (PSO) is calling on urgent action to add thousands of skilled tradespeople to the workforce and address poaching across projects.
What’s next?
The PSO is calling on the government to enforce first and second-year apprenticeship quotas on all major energy projects.
There are not enough workers to build both the houses and data centres in Australia’s pipeline, with new data showing the artificial intelligence boom will exacerbate this shortfall.
The Powering Skills Organisation (PSO), a government-established jobs and skills commission, has warned that already-high competition for workers has been accelerated.
The report, released on Wednesday, estimates Australia needs an additional 72,000 electricians, technicians and related tradespeople by 2030 to meet projected demand.
Last year, the same report forecast a 42,000 energy worker shortage.
A key driver of the increased gap is the rapid growth in construction of data centres, expected to be worth about $150 billion by the end of the decade, according to Treasury.
PSO chief executive Anthea Middleton said the government commitment to build data centres is now competing with other aims, such as the Housing Accord target to build 1.2 million homes and the nation’s renewables transition.
“We have multiple national priorities that are simultaneously competing for the same electricians, technicians and skilled trades workers,” she told ABC.
“And we can see that this pressure is expected to persist over many years rather than follow a normal economic cycle.”
In March, the federal government outlined national expectations for data centre and AI infrastructure developers.
It urged them to address skills gaps by investing in developing local workers by offering apprenticeships and other training pathways.
There were about 162 operational data centres in the country as of March, with a further 130 proposed.
The data centre drive alone requires a further 13,000 energy trades workers, the report estimates.
Dean Spicer is at the forefront of the AI push, with his Melbourne-based business building the electrical cables used in data centres.
He admits it is increasingly difficult to attract and retain staff, with employees being “snapped up” by data centre construction.
“It’s devastating because you’ve got a real opportunity to grow your business but in the sector that we’re working, often fixed price, we’re unable to compete with the rates and conditions being offered in that space,” he told ABC.
“We’ve recently lost one of our team who’ve been with us for 12 years … some of the things they’re doing to attract staff is mind-boggling.”
Call for quotas to address apprenticeship ‘poaching’
Electrical apprenticeship completion rates remain high at 70 per cent, as does the demand for them, but there is significant pressure on businesses to offer the training.
Ms Middleton highlights that small and medium businesses bear the brunt of training apprentices, with large infrastructure projects then hiring people towards the end of their apprenticeship.
She said a lack of guidelines to hire first and second-year apprentices on all major projects has “enabled a system of poaching” as she called for quotas.
“I think we have an opportunity to leverage that investment to make sure that they are also investing in the Australian skills and employment outcomes for Australian workers,” she said.
In 2023, the federal government launched a clean energy apprenticeship program, offering a $10,000 incentive for those who undertook a full-time traineeship to help bolster numbers.
As of July, more than 26,000 Australians had commenced apprenticeships in the sector, including solar, automotive, battery installation and electrical trades.
Stewart Joyce, CEO of the National Electrical Communications Association, said the government should also consider compensating businesses that lost workers to big projects.
“That smaller or medium-sized contractor is compensated for the time, because most of the cost and time and effort you put in to develop an apprentice … It’s not until the second and third year that they start to become … profitable to your business,” he said.
He said housing construction would be affected by the data centre boom and struggled to see how all the projects could be completed without a coordinated approach.
“It’s very difficult to try and think the amount of electricians we’ve got at the moment are going to cover all of those projects all happening at the same time,” he said.
“I think the answer is somehow everybody needs to be able to talk and plan these projects so that we try to utilise the labour as best as possible, because there’s only a finite amount.”