BlackRock Teams with NABTU to Tackle Data Center Labor Crunch

BlackRock is addressing a labor shortage in the construction of data centers and AI infrastructure by partnering with North America's Building Trades Unions (NABTU). The Memorandum of Understanding between BlackRock's Global Infrastructure Partners unit, the AI Infrastructure Partnership, and NABTU aims to connect over 3 million skilled trades workers to projects. This comes as companies are racing to build AI infrastructure, but the workforce can't keep up.

The agreement is non-binding, but it commits both parties to share early project pipeline details, expand apprenticeship programs, and coordinate recruitment before construction begins. NABTU brings its training network of over 1,900 apprenticeship facilities across the US and Canada into the partnership.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and NABTU President Sean McGarvey emphasized the focus on job quality rather than quantity. This is in line with BlackRock's recent acquisition of Aligned Data Centers for $40 billion, which signaled its serious commitment to the data center sector as an asset class.