# A paid training path is filling data center trade jobs

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/a-paid-training-path-is-filling-data-center-trade-jobs/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Dina Powell McCormick](https://realalpha.app/builders/dina-powell-mccormick/) · Dina Powell McCormick is president and vice chairwoman of Meta Platforms. · Leads Meta's external affairs and AI infrastructure strategy as a former Trump deputy security adviser.
- Host: [Chamath Palihapitiya](https://realalpha.app/people/chamath-palihapitiya/) · Founder & CEO, Social Capital · Led Facebook's growth team; his firm backed Slack and AI chipmaker Groq.
- Host: [Jason Calacanis](https://realalpha.app/people/jason-calacanis/) · Founder & CEO, LAUNCH · Early Uber angel; sold Weblogs Inc. to AOL; hosts This Week in Startups.
- Host: [David Sacks](https://realalpha.app/people/david-sacks/) · Co-founder & partner, Craft Ventures · PayPal's first COO, founded Yammer; White House AI & crypto czar 2025–26.
- Host: [David Friedberg](https://realalpha.app/people/david-friedberg/) · CEO, Ohalo · Founded The Climate Corporation, sold to Monsanto for about $1.1B in 2013.
- Show: All-In
- Episode: [Meta's Dina Powell McCormick: The Case for Data Centers, Backlash, AI Job Boom & Meta’s Future](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/), Sep 17, 2026
- Moment: 21:00 to 26:18 of the episode (5 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/a-paid-training-path-is-filling-data-center-trade-jobs/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1260

## Quote

> “40,000 Americans applied. We've graduated 250 people. And we have a **90% retention rate**.”
> — [Dina Powell McCormick](https://realalpha.app/builders/dina-powell-mccormick/) at [22:30](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1350) · All-In

## Takeaways

1. 40,000 people applied; 250 had graduated at the time of the interview.
2. Graduates had a 90% retention rate.
3. Trainees are paid the job rate while they train.

## About this segment

Meta's workforce academy trains people for fiber and other site jobs, guarantees graduates a job at a Meta site, and pays them during training. Its early results suggest the model could scale through industry partnerships.

From “Meta's Dina Powell McCormick: The Case for Data Centers, Backlash, AI Job Boom & Meta’s Future”, Sep 17, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[21:05](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1265) you just tell that story? Because I think it's incredible. So even in our site in Louisiana, one of the issues is that we just can't find enough workers. And you really need a set of obviously welders and pipe fitters and construction workers, electricians. But there's something that every data center site really needs fiber technicians, the people that just actually lay and cut the fiber. And we just could not find enough people. And so, we just made a curriculum and we partnered with a few people, CBRE and others. And we realized that this program just didn't exist. So, we decided if you can do it for fiber technicians, why not go beyond?

[21:41](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1301) It's a five-week fast track training program where you get all of your safety training. you get designated something called job site ready so you can get the job. We at Meta guarantee you a job if you graduate on one of our data center sites. And you have that certification with you whether you want to stay at our site or elsewhere. And the missing piece is that while there are, as David Sacks has said over and over again, there are 500,000 open jobs for these roles over the next couple of years. But there is this gap between people actually getting those jobs.

[22:14](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1334) And it's because it turns out if you're a waitress or you're an Uber driver or you are a home health care worker, you live paycheck to paycheck. You cannot afford to take that time off unpaid. The training is weirdly very expensive, OSHA training and things like that. And what if you do that and you don't get a job? So we launched America's Workforce Academy. We launched it, I don't know, four months ago.

[22:36](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1356) 40,000 Americans applied. We've graduated 250 people. And we have a 90% retention rate. So, people that are getting into these contractor jobs on our data center sites, you can see they've learned a new trade, they've left behind a job that wasn't as fulfilling, and that, of course, every company that's hiring them is just thrilled. It's also something that's interesting, David, that you and I talked about, which is we have partners across the board in this program.

[23:05](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1385) We called, we didn't put meta in the name because we are so excited to be working with other companies that are interested in recruiting these workers as well. But we're working with the unions. Sean McGarvey, the head of the trades, NABTU, is a friend, and we made a great partnership with him. Some of those workers are on union sites, some are non-union. But an interesting voice that has emerged in this debate is the unions.

[23:28](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1408) The union leadership now is saying, we want to be anti the anti-data center backlash. These are our jobs. These are for our people. And so they actually put out, even before the midterms, a note saying they are only going to support candidates that support data centers. How much balance sheet capital does it take to get this thing off the ground? And do you see the other majors, the big eight, kind of joining forward?

[24:00](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1440) and having this new educational track kind of become a de facto standard in America? You know, all of us are working on this. In fact, I just talked to Ruth Porat at Google. She's done an incredible job on workforce and she's actually brought together, we're gonna join this alliance. Larry Fink at BlackRock has joined the alliance. She's bringing together other companies. You know, we might compete on models and products, but we don't wanna compete on people.

[24:24](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1464) We as an industry, I think, are doing this part well where we're really working together because anybody that gets trained to work on a metadata center site can certainly go to a Google site or a Microsoft site. And so this is a place where we've really come together. How do you expand the capacity? So there's 40,000 that applied, but you picked 400. That's 39,600. Yeah, and we started four months ago and now we're literally getting calls from Mary Barra at GM.

[24:49](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1489) I'd like a thousand employees. You know, once you have the curriculum and the certification and the partners to deliver it, you can do these everywhere. We're doing them in community colleges. vfw halls in that particular program you actually have to have a site that's kind of like a model data center so that you can show how to train the fiber technicians but we're working with the association of builders and contractors they have you know thousands and thousands of places across the country where they operate why is it so expensive outside of you guys basically backstopping this to get something like job site ready and osha awareness i mean this should seem like you go online? I think the thing that we unlocked is that we actually pay during the training what you would get if you are already in the job. It used to be that there's a very low fee or an

[25:38](https://realalpha.app/v/qp2IbgJ5Z-8/?t=1538) apprentice fee for so long that it wasn't the full payment of the job. And so we do that from the beginning. And then, of course, these jobs. I mean, David and I've been in Pittsburgh with some of these workers. And these are jobs. Welders make $100,000, $120,000 a year in Pittsburgh. That is meaningful, great work. And I think the unlock that we're very proud of with this program is that there just wasn't a clear and fast path to getting on the job site and to having a guaranteed job. It's great that you have these jobs because with AI progressing so quickly, these developers are going to need something to do. And so I think they can segue into