Data center CEO is hoping for a skilled-trades revival in his lifetime—he’s recruiting couch-dwelling Gen Z with two weeks of vacation on day one

It’s a great time to be in the skilled trades.

That’s according to Dan Peyovich, president and CEO of Dycom Industries, who says surging demand for the infrastructure behind AI—from fiber networks to data centers—is colliding with a persistent shortage of hands-on workers.

“There’s no doubt there’s a skilled trade shortage now,” he said at Fortune’s COO Summit in Scottsdale, Arizona on Tuesday. 

And he’s not wrong: A wave of data center construction, an aging workforce, and decades of education pipelines steering students toward four-year degrees have converged into what industry leaders increasingly describe as a structural labor gap. This year alone, the construction industry is facing workforce shortages of more than 550,000 unfilled positions.

By 2030, an estimated 2.1 million skilled trades jobs in the U.S. could go unfilled—with potential economic losses reaching $1 trillion annually—according to the U.S. Department of Education.

Peyovich’s company sits squarely in the middle of that demand spike. Dycom Industries, which builds telecommunications and utility infrastructure, now employs about 20,000 skilled workers—growth fueled in part by its $1.95 billion acquisition of a data center electrical contractor in 2025, as part of a broader push into AI-era infrastructure........

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