Alberta’s data-centre story is usually told in megawatts and capital. Boards should also underwrite people. The same industrial-electrician, HVAC/R, and controls tickets that keep a campus live are already scarce in the wider construction market. Published wage averages describe a recent baseline. They do not describe what stacked peaks will cost.
The pipeline is larger than any one campus
As of 11 September 2026, the DC Intel tracker lists 33 Alberta data-centre projects: 5 under construction, 24 proposed, 1 approved, and 3 inactive. Those counts are a snapshot of public evidence, scored as described in the scoring method. They are not a forecast of how many sites will reach final investment decision.
Announced capacity across the tracker uses mixed bases - facility power, computing load, on-site generation, and connection requests. It should not be treated as committed MW. Talent planning that assumes the full announcement stack will hire at once will overstate demand. Planning that treats a single campus as the market will understate it.
Construction labour dwarfs steady-state operations
Public figures for Meta’s Sturgeon County campus make the split concrete. Meta and the Government of Alberta describe more than CAD $13 billion of investment, about 3,000 construction workers at peak, and more than 300 operational jobs. Construction is a surge. Operations is a standing crew. They are not interchangeable headcount.
A board that only models the 300-plus live-ops roles will miss the construction bottleneck. A board that only models the construction peak will miss who must still be on shift after energization. Both windows compete for industrial electricians, HVAC/R mechanics, and controls technicians.
The same tickets are already tight
This is not only a data-centre problem. The Business Council of Alberta’s Stretched Thin report (November 2024) put Alberta construction vacancy at 5.3% in Q2 2024, and specialty trade contractors at 6.3%. ALIS classifies electricians and HVAC/R mechanics as Hot on the 2024-2026 forecast. The provincial labour-market profile for industrial electricians reports that 52.5% of employers found hiring difficult, with a 5.4% long-term vacancy rate.
ICTC and the Government of Alberta have already funded workforce mapping for the data-centre buildout. That is a public signal that the province expects a talent constraint. It is not, by itself, a staffing plan for any one campus.
Competition will bid; averages lag
ALIS published averages are the current public baseline: electrician about $38.41 an hour ($81,919 a year); industrial electrician about $40.13 ($89,593); HVAC/R about $41.35 ($87,260). Those figures are facts about the published market. They are not a bid for a data-centre peak, dual-ticket coverage, or night-shift live ops.
BCA, citing CME, reports that 72% of employers who struggled to hire found raising wages or benefits effective. The same BCA work notes that, nationally from January 2019 to August 2024, trades wage growth (19%) lagged all occupations (25%). The lag is a fact. The assessment is that stacked data-centre peaks plus other mega-projects - including Dow, Pathways CCUS, housing, and oil and gas - will pull those tickets and the premiums around them (overtime, dual-ticket, contractor mark-up) before headline averages fully catch up.
This article does not forecast a percentage wage increase, a “market rate” for data-centre trades, or how many tracked projects will reach FID.
What boards should underwrite
Labour is an execution risk. Underwrite three things, separately for construction peak and for live ops: cost, coverage, and competency.
Cost includes more than the ALIS average. Coverage is whether the roster can actually staff the tickets on the calendar you need - including overtime, turnarounds, and concurrent industrial work in the region. Competency is whether the people on shift can run the facility you built. DC Intel’s operations assurance work treats workforce as demonstrated capability. It is not a certification programme.